Though the phrase "the Age of Johnson" is less used than it once was, Samuel Johnson, whose life spanned most of the eighteenth century and whose writings embraced an astounding variety of genres, remains a central figure in the literary history of the time. As for the novel, the newest and most experimental of forms, Johnson remained indifferent or even hostile to most of its expressions. But his attitude toward fiction reveals much about the special problems faced by the novelists who were his contemporaries; and Johnson's own philosophical narrative, Rasselas , deserves a significant place in any history of eighteenth-century fiction.

Johnson was born in 1709 at Lichfield in Staffordshire, to the middle-aged Michael and Sarah Ford Johnson. Michael Johnson was a prominent citizen of the small cathedral city, a hardworking but never very successful bookseller. The boy's earliest years were troubled by a tubercular lymph infection, known as...