THE text is taken from Roger Lonsdale’s Oxford University Press edition The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; with Critical Observations on their Works, 4 vols. (2006). This is based on the 4-volume 1783 edition of The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, the last to be published in Johnson’s lifetime. As Lonsdale argues in his introduction (vol. i., pp. 182–4), it is clear that Johnson himself undertook thorough revision of the previous (1781) edition for this edition. Furthermore, there is evidence from a surviving section of the text marked up for amendment by Johnson that all the revisions for the 1783 edition were authorial.
All footnotes are by Johnson. Asterisks in the text indicate an explanatory note at the back of the book.
The following authors were included in Johnson’s original Lives of the Poets but are not included in the present selection: