Dr Johnson's Dictionary
by Henry Hitchings
John Murray $225
In the poor London parish of St Giles's Cripplegate, near the open sewers of Moorfields and the lunatic asylum at Bedlam, lay Grubb Street, 'not so much a geographical space', writes Henry Hitchings, 'as a state of mind'.
For Samuel Johnson, it summed up the perils of being a writer and where he would end up if he failed, a place 'inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems'.
When the 28-year-old Johnson came to London in 1737, the printing press had made it possible for the writer to earn a living with his pen by finding an audience of paying readers, rather than relying on a patron or the play-going public. 'It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing,' he observed, calling it 'an epidemical conspiracy for the destruction of paper'.
Johnson discovered early that praise for his writing did not put food on the table or a clean shirt on his back. It was not until 1762, with a pension of #300 bestowed on him by George III, that he would be safe from Grubb Street, and the Dr Johnson made famous by James Boswell's biography would come into his own.