Samuel Johnson: The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics)

Posterity views Samuel Johnson primarily as a superb critic and meticulous lexicographer, but as a satirist and imitator of the great Augustan social critics, he equalled and sometimes surpassed his contemporaries, even Pope and Dryden. Johnson alone captured the stateliness and declamatory grandeur of Juvenal, and ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’, his brilliant imitation of Juvenal’s tenth satire, is generally considered to be a great tragic poem, a grand vision of human unfulfilment. Along with ‘London’, a savage satire combining indignation and imagination, ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’ demonstrates his poetic subtlety and strength. 

This edition includes all his poems, a final version of ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’ and a first draft of this work contained in an appendix, as well as a selection from his Latin poems and from Irene, his single attempt at verse drama. In his extensive notes on the poetry, Dr Fleeman has referred to Johnson’s own Dictionary of the English Language to illuminate the exact meaning of the poet’s language.