Samuel Johnson, poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer, made lasing contributions to English literature was born September 18, 1709 in Lichfield, Staffordshire, England in the family home above his wealthy father‘s bookshop. His mother, Sarah Ford was 40 years old when gave birth to him. There was concern he would die in infancy but his health improved. His was plagued with illness throughout his life. As a child he had scrofula, a disease thought to be cured royalty. A physician recommended he be touched by royalty and received his royal touch from Queen Anne in 1712. The royal touch was not effective in curing Johnson and an operation was performed leaving him with scars on his face and body. A few months later his younger brother, Nathaniel was born. His father was unable to keep up with his debts and family could no longer live the style of life they had been living. Johnson’s parents were proud of his demonstrated signs of intelligence as a child. He had the ability to memorize and recite passages at a young age. While attending Lichfield Grammar school he began to have tics and make odd gestures which would influence how people would view him upon meeting him. He excelled in his studies as a grammar school student especially Latin and was promoted to upper school at the age of nine. When he was 16 years old his future was uncertain because his father was deeply in debt resulting in him working in his father’s bookshop stitching books. He would read various works and build his literary knowledge during this time. Three years later, his mother’s cousin died and left enough money to send Johnson back to school. He attended Pembroke College in Oxford where he read excess... ... middle of paper ... ... a tour of Scotland,; he recorded their trip in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775). Johnson's last great work, was the ten-volume Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets (also known as the Lives of the Poets ), was completed when he was seventy-two years old. It is a series of biographical and critical studies of fifty-two English poets. Johnson’s last years were saddened by the deaths of his old friends Dr. Robert Levett, and Thrale, and by a quarrel with Thrale's widow concerning her remarriage which seemed to Johnson, inappropriate haste. Following a series of illnesses he died on December 13, 1784 and was buried at Westminster Abby. Following his death, Johnson become recognized as having a lasting effect on literary criticism and as the only great critic of English Literature. Works Cited wikipedia.com
Samuel Sewall lived a very Puritan life in early colonial Boston. As a man who cared deeply for his religion and his family, Sewall dearly loved his family and viewed their good and poor health as God’s reward or punishment. He did not, however, simply attend to his family to satisfy what he believed was God’s will. Rising rapidly to a position of prominence in society, Sewall was blessed with money and a close relationship with his wife and children. He aided them individually through illnesses, moral dilemmas, and he guided them through the mourning process after any deaths in the family, though he himself suffered most. Samuel Sewall’s relationship with his family was one of close ties and a strong religious orientation; they prayed and read together from the Bible daily which in turn allowed them to grow closer.
After extensive research I came across some interesting information on Anthony Johnson. Mr. Johnson came over to America in 1620 as an indentured servant. The meaning of indentured servant according to the dictionary is “A person who came to America and was
Born in Groton, Conn., Samuel Seabury was the son of the Reverend Samuel Seabury Sr. His Father was a pioneer of New England Anglicanism who followed the example of Samuel Johnson. Samuel Jr.,broke away from the Congregationalists and pursued Anglican ordination. He graduated from Yale in 1744 and received his B.A in 1748. He married Abigail Mumford and went abroad in 1784 to obtain consecration as an Anglican Priest. On December 23, 1753, Samuel Seabury was ordained a deacon and two days later a priest of the Anglican Church. He was licensed by the church to preach in New Jersey. He preached in various places, but none suited his fancy. A preacher in Westchester was charged with drunkenness and sexual assault, which opened up the preaching position. Samuel filled the position and preached in an uneventful ministry. He also ran a school in Westchester.
Masson, Davis. Essays Biographical and Critical: Chiefly on English Poets. La Vergne, Tennessee: Lightning Source, Inc., 2007.
Benjamin Franklin was a multi-faceted man, due to his achievements that were unexpected of him, his advances through many areas of his life and his faith that many adapted. Born into a large family of ten children, Franklin was not expected to be the leading man he was. His father was a soap maker, and his family thought Franklin would be a part of the clergy. (Ben Franklin The Electric Franklin 1) Franklin’s expectations make his successes so much more impactful because of his ability to be a leader from a young age and represent America as a powerful nation. Through the printing press Franklin was able to support himself for the rest of his life, which lead him to tackle his curiosities through discovering and inventing. (Benjamin Franklin1) Benjamin Franklin affected America through his accomplishments as a blunt publisher and writer, an innovative scientist and inventor, and a superior political figurehead.
His job was not an easy one as he was meant to carry out many duties placed upon him by the Governor as well as the mission of his own. Johnson’s duties included officiating at hangings and acting as magistrate when needed. In the first five years, he conducted 226 baptisms, 220 marriages and 851 funerals. One of Johnson’s obstacles was the lack of support he received. He and his wife, Mary, lived in a cabbage palm hut for the first three years while the Governor had two mansions. Many times his family was short of food and in addition to his regular duties; he worked on his farm to provide for his family.
John H. Johnson was born January 19, 1918 in rural Arkansas City, Arkansas. His parents were Leroy Johnson and Gertrude Jenkins Johnson. His father was killed in a sawmill accident when little John was eight years old. He attended the community's overcrowded, segregated elementary school. In the early 1930s, there was no public high school for African-Americans in Arkansas. His mother heard of better opportunities for African-Americans in Chicago and saved her meager earnings as a washerwoman and a cook and for years until she could afford to move her family to Chicago. This resulted in them becoming a part of the African-American Great Migration of 1933. There, Johnson was exposed to something he never knew existed, middle class black people.
Samuel Adams may have been the most radical person in American history. He is often called the original radical. At first glance, he appeared as a very disorganized and incompetent man. He often wore the same set of clothes for a few days straight without washing them. With further inspection, one would notice that he is a little more than he appears on the outside. Adams was a well-known American patriot, which was a leader of the resistance to British policy before the American Revolution. Later, he became active in Boston politics, eventually being elected to the legislative body of Massachusetts in 1765 where he assumed leadership of the movement in Massachusetts that advocated independence from Great Britain.
Andrew Jackson rose from humble beginnings to become the seventh President of the United States in 1828. Jackson’s rise in popularity and power coincided with the prevailing rise of democracy in America. While President Jackson was one of the most influential presidents in history he remains one of the most controversial. During Jackson’s administration he supported the will of the people, however he neglected the minority and abused his power as president. President Andrew Jackson was appropriately designated as the “People’s President” as he personifies America’s conflicted history of democracy.
Samuel Sewall born in 1652 in England. He was taken as a child to Newbury, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard in 1671. He became a minister but gave up the role to take management of a printing press in Boston and entered upon a public career. He was elected in 1683 to the general court and was a member of the council. As one of the judges who tried the Salem witchcraft cases in 1692, he shared the responsibility for the conviction of nineteen persons. However, he became convinced of the error of these convictions and in 1697 in Old South Church, Boston, publicly accepted the “blame and shame” for them. Sewall served for thirty-seven years as judge of the superior court of the colony, being chief justice during the last ten years of his service. Sewall was also a well-known author and his most famous work was his three-volume diary, which is very revealing of Samuel Sewall and the period he lived in. Sewall was a respected figure of his time and shared relations with other prominent icons of the colonial era. When Sewall entered Harvard he shared a home for two years with Edward Taylor, a famous American poet who became a lifelong friend of Sewall’s. Also in the year of the Salem witch Trials Samuel Sewall was appointed as one of nine judges by Govenor Phips, another fellow judge on this board was Cotton Mather. A famous individual of colonial times he was a minister of Boston’s Old North Church and was a true believer in witchcraft. Sewall and Mather were both puritans, authors, and shared similar views. Samuel Sewall died in Boston, Massachusetts in 1730, January 1st.
Originally a bonded man, Johnson is introduced as an exemplary figure in terms of his capacity to raise himself above his humble beginnings and to die having accrued a significant amount of property; enabling him to bear a reputation as a “black patriarch” (Bree & Innes, 7) and someone who, regardless of the evident difference between themselves and their white neighbours, proved through their very existence that opportunities for social advancement existed for the non-white individuals in the period under
"William Bradford 1590-1657." The Norton Anthology of American Literature Volume A: Beginnings to 1820. . 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 121-122. Print.
Benjamin Franklin was one of the most significant figures during the 18th century. The significance of Benjamin Franklin can be observed through his contributions to society. Such contributions include his profession as a printer, the creation of the first subscription library, the creation of Poor Richard’s Almanac, and his experiments with electricity. In addition, Franklin also tried to reconcile the differences between England and America, and when that proved futile, he traveled to France in an attempt to convince the French to support America in their quest for independence from England. At one point in time Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American on the planet.
Samuel Johnson the premier literary figure of mid-eighteenth century was born to Sarah and Michael Johnson on 18th Sep, 1709. Though his father was once sheriff of the town yet, he had to face financial troubles right from birth to his education at Oxford and even later in his literary career. He had caught tuberculosis from his wet nurse and had contracted scrofula too. He could barely see from one eye. Yet the laurels attached to Johnson’s name are immense. Though he had to bear physical, financial hardship he rose to great heights. Had it been any other person it would not have been possible for him to attain so much in the literary field as Johnson. His father when died left him penniless with an inheritance of twenty pounds. Next thirty years for him was a long struggle with poverty. He became incurable hypochondriac. A deep melancholy undertook him. It was under these circumstances that his literary career began with Gentleman’s magazine. In 1738 came his poem ‘London’ with this he became an unknown but notable poet. Slowly he earned a name for himself and it was in these circumstances that Warburton praised him which was no li...
In his biographies of Samuel Johnson--Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) and The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)--James Boswell has presented a portrait of Samuel Johnson that contemporary audiences found compellingly realistic and that modern audiences continue to find "lifelike." I propose in this current study to study the narrative structure of Boswell's work, examining the elements of story and discourse that make up his his florid yet mild, his outdated but effective, in short, his successful technique. In a careful, comparitive analysis of several works, fiction and non-fictional, I will search for the elusive ingredient that makes Boswell's work "real." The works to be discussed including three by Boswell and one by Henry Fielding.