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Dr Samuel Johnson (1709–84) is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of English literature, as a poet, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. This collected edition of his works - commissioned by the publisher within hours of Johnson's death, such was his celebrity - was published in 1787 in eleven volumes, edited by his literary executor, the musicologist Sir John Hawkins. Volume 11 contains poetry in English and Latin, prayers, and a variety of literary forms - a fantasy, The Vision of Theodore, Johnson's only play, Irene, Rasselas, which uses an oriental tale and a French form to meditate on the folly of the quest for human happiness, and The Vanity of Human Wishes, based on one of Juvenal's satires. There is also an index to the eleven-volume set.
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