Later Johnson

The crowning achievement of Johnson's career was the publication of Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets (1779-1781). This work would become known as the Lives of the Poets, and it first appeared in two forms: collected together in ten volumes and published separately; and appended to a fifty-eight-volume set of the poets' works. In the Lives, Johnson surveys the lives and work of fifty-two poets. Though he praises the greatest among them, he always employs his judicial and evaluative voice. He also dismisses the inconsequential among the authors, whom the publishers, rather than Johnson, largely chose for inclusion. The Hyde Collection preserves two important pre-publication items: the manuscript of his essay on Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718) and the proofs of the life of Pope, with Johnson's manuscript corrections. The proofs owe their survival to the novelist Fanny Burney, who asked Johnson to have them saved for her, when they would otherwise have been discarded by the printer after use.