Publication of Johnson's Dictionary was the culmination of a project that turned an immense record of English usage into a two-volume reference work. Published on 15 April 1755, Samuel Johnson’s dictionary became a commercial success and remained the standard repository of the language for the next century, even as its personality and editorial judgments attracted criticism.

From word list to finished dictionary

Johnson completed his list of the English word-stock in 1750, after drawing on references from a broad span of English writing. The work then entered a further four years of editing: he revised and selected 118,000 illustrative quotations and completed definitions for 43,500 headwords. The citations were not always treated as untouchable evidence; at times, he changed quotations he disliked. For some definitions he wrote afresh, while for others he borrowed substantial passages from writers he admired.

Publication and Oxford’s degree

The completed dictionary did not appear as soon as its definitions were finished. Johnson wanted to persuade Oxford University to grant him a degree, believing that the distinction would benefit the university, the book’s sales, and his own standing. Oxford agreed, and on 15 April 1755 the work appeared in two volumes under the full title A Dictionary of the English Language, in which the Words are deduced from their Originals; and Illustrated in their Different Significations, by Examples from the Best Writers to which are prefixed a History of the Language and an English Grammar, by Samuel Johnson, M.A. The publication thus presented both a major scholarly undertaking and a title page bearing the academic credential Johnson had sought.

Success, influence, and credit

The dictionary went through four editions during Johnson’s lifetime and achieved enormous commercial success. It was widely praised and remained unrivalled as a repository of English for about a century. The reception also exposed the politics of literary patronage: Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, praised the work while implying that he had played a larger part in its making than he had. Johnson resented the claim. Under the headword patron, he defined the term as “a wretch who supports with indolence, and is paid with flattery,” a pointed rebuke that Chesterfield brushed aside.

Criticism and the character of the work

Not all readers welcomed Johnson’s presence in the dictionary. To critics who expected an impersonal authority, the intrusion of his personality seemed unprofessional. Others challenged the authority of some cited writers, a limitation Johnson had anticipated in his preface, or found the definitions uneven: some seemed trite, while others were needlessly elaborate. The definition of network, for example, described something reticulated or crossed at equal distances, with spaces between the intersections. Complaints also reflected political and literary rivalries: some hostile reviewers disparaged Johnson’s achievement or treated the dictionary as an expression of Tory politics. The disputes did not dislodge the work’s standing, but they show that its authority rested alongside visible choices of taste, judgment, and personality.