Samuel Johnson (1709-84) grew up in Staffordshire with a bookshop on the ground floor of his home, his father being a bookseller. As a sickly but precocious child, Samuel spent much of his time reading. He went on to create the revered ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’ in 1755, which stood as the ultimate authority on spelling, meaning, usage and pronunciation for the next 125 years.

It took nine years to produce, with the help of six assistants. The Earl of Chesterfield gave him the contract in 1746 and paid him £1,575. The Earl was thrilled with the eventual result. Not only did it give definitions but also more than 200,000 examples of correct use, borrowed from writers such as Shakespeare and Milton.

Johnson had started the project with the idea that it would “fix” the language, but by the end of the nine years he had come to realise that it is folly to imagine that any dictionary “can embalm [the] language and secure it from corruption and decay” (Johnson, quoted in Crystal, 2007). Nevertheless, Johnson’s dictionary was a major milestone in the English language and set a high standard for all future efforts.

(Image: Alex Brown on Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

‘Beowulf’ is the oldest surviving and longest epic poem written in Old English, having 3,182 lines of alliterative verse. It appears as one of the items on an authentic manuscript kept at the British Library. Its author is unknown, as is its date but it is estimated at anywhere between 650 and 1010.

Beowulf travels from Sweden to help the Danes vanquish a demon who became angry at hearing their religious beliefs. Not only did the brave, incredibly strong Beowulf kill the demon, but did the same to his grief-stricken, avenging demon mother. To cut a long story short, Beowulf spends fifty years as a good king, then suffers a fatal neck-bite from a dragon whom he slays to protect his cowardly people.

This superhero tale was brought to Britain by the invading Saxons and its plot has become embedded into English literature in various forms. For instance, the English patron saint, George, fought and killed a dragon and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is said to have been greatly influenced by his in-depth study of ‘Beowulf’.

(Image of ‘Beowulf’ manuscript: Ken Eckert at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)