Early life

Samuel Johnson was born in Litchfield, Staffordshire, England, on September 18, 1709, the son of Michael Johnson and Sarah Ford. His father was a bookseller, and Johnson owed much of his education to the fact that he grew up in a bookstore. Johnson was plagued by illness all his life. As a child he suffered from scrofula (an infection of the face that causes scars), smallpox, and partial deafness and blindness. One of his first memories was of being taken to London, England, where he was touched by Queen Anne (1665–1714) (the touch of the ruler was then thought to be a cure for scrofula).

Johnson was educated at the Litchfield Grammar School, where he learned Latin and Greek. He later studied with a minister in a nearby village from whom he learned a valuable lesson—that if one is to master any subject, one must first discover its general principles, or, as Johnson put it, "but grasp the Trunk hard only, and you will shake all the Branches." In 1728 and 1729 Johnson spent fourteen months at Pembroke College, Oxford. Too poor and embarrassed by his poverty, Johnson could not complete the work for a degree. Johnson supported himself with teaching jobs after his father died in 1731. In 1735 he married Elizabeth Porter, a widow some twenty years older than him. Still trying to find a way to make a living, Johnson opened a boarding school, which had only three pupils. One of them was David Garrick (1717–1779), who would eventually become a famous actor.