Samuel Johnson--poet, dramatist, journalist, satirist, biographer, essayist, lexicographer, editor, translator, critic, parliamentary reporter, political writer, story writer, sermon writer, travel writer and social anthropologist, prose stylist, conversationalist, Christian--dominates the eighteenth-century English literary scene as his contemporary, the equally versatile and prolific Voltaire, dominates that of France. Perhaps more: Voltaire had redoubtable rivals during his lifetime, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot; Johnson had none. Alexander Pope, a greater poet (though Johnson was a fine one), and Jonathan Swift, a greater satirist (though Johnson's skill as a satirist has been underestimated), had died in the 1740s; Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, Johnson's precursors as popular essayists, still earlier. When Johnson's name began to be known, not long after the deaths of Swift and Pope, no challenger arose during the next forty years for the title of preeminent English man of letters.

That period has often been called the Age of...