The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. : Together with his Life, and Notes on his Lives of the Poets

Dr Samuel Johnson (1709–84) is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of English literature, as a poet, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.

This collected edition of his works - commissioned by the publisher within hours of Johnson's death, such was his celebrity - was published in 1787 in eleven volumes, edited by his literary executor, the musicologist Sir John Hawkins.

Volume 3 contains the second part of his Lives of the Poets, his last major work.

This was a commission to provide short accounts of over fifty poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it set a new standard for English literary biography.

Although not all of the subjects have been regarded as eminent by posterity, and Johnson was criticised for brusque treatment of well-connected courtier poets now largely forgotten, the work was a great success.