Samuel Johnson Lichfield, Staffordshire , UK, 1709 - London , UK, 1784
The son of a bookseller and therefore humbly source , Samuel Johnson was educated at Lichfield Grammar School and then at Pembroke College, Oxford , an institution that had to leave because of financial difficulties . He worked as a schoolteacher and , at age 25 , he married Elizabeth Porter , a widow to twenty years older than him . In 1737 he settled in London, where he began writing for The Gentleman's Magazine. Between 1747 and 1755 he composed his most famous work , A Dictionary of the Language Inglés . During that period he also published a series of weekly articles in The Rambler , and in 1758, begins the series The Idler . His philosophical novel The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia was published in 1759 with great success . In 1763 James Boswell meets his future biographer , and founded "The Club ," an influential literary circle in London life , which involved among other Edmund Burke and Edward Gibbon. Already famous , in 1765 received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin , and ten years later another awarded by Oxford. His last major work , Lives of the English Poets, appeared in 1781. At his death in 1784 , is buried in Westminster Abbey , and a large monument was erected in his memory in St. Paul's Cathedral in London.