Samuel Johnson's Dictionary took nine years to write and ... which was published in 1755. Johnson came from Lichfield in Staffordshire and moved to London in his twenties to find work as a writer.

But it took just a smidge over 150 years for another dictionary to be published that, arguably, set the standard for those that followed. On 15 April 1755, Dr Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the ...

Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, was a mammoth work of solo scholarship, nine years in the making, and sweated out in a state of self-flagellating ...