One problem with Samuel Johnson’s reputation as a writer, rather than as a character in literature, is a problem of genre. He contributed to a dozen genres, including drama, poetry, biography, criticism, lexicography, homiletics, scholarly editing, bibliography, travel writing, and fiction; to which we could add – to account for the rest of the contents of his collected works – translations, political and controversial literature, and letters. If one had to limit Johnson’s most characteristic work to a single form, though, it would be the troublesome but delightful genre of the essay. Johnson wrote or contributed to three series of essays: 203 of the 208 essays in the Rambler (1750–2), ninety-two of the 104 essays in the Idler (1758–60), and twenty-eight of the 140 essays in John Hawkesworth’s series the Adventurer (1753–4). These 323 essays amount to more than 400,000 words of original prose.

Furthermore, most of the rest of his work is in the linguistic register of the essay, nonfictional prose. As critic Gérard Genette points out, nonfictional prose embraces all sorts of purely functional writing, and this troubles the essay’s status as a literary form: there are few major writers whose work is predominantly in this essentially minor form. Whenever we engage with Johnson, though, we are engaging with an essayistic intelligence. His biographies and major prefaces are long essays; his critical notes and Dictionary definitions are précis of essays; his poems are essays in verse; his Parliamentary Debates and Rasselas are vehicles for essayistic reflections.