Episode 1 of 2

Contracting Johnson

When: June 1746
Where: London
Part of: Samuel Johnson begins work on A Dictionary of the English Language

London booksellers contracted Johnson in June 1746 to write a dictionary for 1,500 guineas.

A group of London booksellers, including Robert Dodsley and Thomas Longman, contracted Samuel Johnson in June 1746. They paid him 1,500 guineas to create a dictionary, aiming to satisfy the needs of the increasing reading and writing public.

Sources

A Dictionary of the English Language Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-02

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.