The author of authoritative biographies of Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott, Edgar Johnson was born on I December 1901 in Brooklyn, New York, to Walter Conover Johnson, a sales manager, and Emily Mathilde Haas Johnson. He studied at Columbia University, graduating in 1922 with a major in English, then spent the next five years tutoring at Columbia, at Washington University in St. Louis, and at Hunter College in New York City. In 1927 he began his long association with the City College of the City University of New York, where he served as tutor, instructor, and professor of English.

While in St. Louis, Johnson had begun to write criticism and book reviews; he would continue to supplement his academic work with journalistic writing throughout his career. His refusal to confine his activity to a purely academic domain has given him the ability to write clear and vivid prose for the...