Samuel Johnson spent nine years compiling a dictionary of the English language almost entirely by himself. The French Academy needed forty scholars and fifty-five years to produce theirs. Johnson did it with six assistants and a fraction of the time, producing definitions so witty that people read them for entertainment.

This episode covers Johnson from his impoverished Lichfield childhood through his years of hack writing, the monumental Dictionary, and his late-life fame as the most formidable conversationalist in London.

• His Dictionary of the English Language took nine years and was completed with only six assistants
• His definitions were famously opinionated and often humorous
• James Boswell’s biography of Johnson is considered the greatest biography in the English language
• He suffered from what modern scholars believe was Tourette syndrome throughout his life