Samuel Johnson (September 18, 1709-December 13, 1784) was a British writer, poet, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) is one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship and his work was viewed as the preeminent English dictionary until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later. His two volumes of Lives of the English Poets and his three volumes of Notes to Shakespeare are towering scholarly works.