Let’s begin with a paradox: in the monumental Dictionary that made his literary reputation in both senses of the word, the English author who gave his name to an age has little to say about reputation in its first neutral sense – “Credit” – and undermines his second definition – “honour” – with two ironic authorities he quotes to illustrate the word. Shakespeare’s Iago, having just destroyed the virtuous Cassio’s reputation, dismisses the concept entirely: “Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving: you have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser.” “Reputation” for “honest” Iago is only a social fiction. And the next quotation, Alexander Pope’s epigram from The Rape of the Lock – “At ev’ry word a reputation dies” – shows the true power of reputation’s “false imposition”: when it comes to the frivolous, cutthroat universe of polite drawing rooms, where surface appearance is all, reputation is a matter of life and death.

But perhaps this contradiction should not surprise us too much. That grand word lexicographer after all, is defined in the Dictionary as “harmless drudge.” Johnson concludes his preface to the completed volume with prideful despair:

This declaration of resolutely English authorial independence – most famously enacted in Johnson’s rejection of the Earl of Chesterfield’s belated offer of patronage in the famous letter of February 1755 – is shadowed by what the reputation that accompanies such achievement effaces: an interior self that is haunted by self-reproach, suffering, loss, and isolation. (Johnson’s wife Tetty died shortly before his labors ended. He never remarried.)