Learn about The life of Samuel Johnson, who compiled the dictionary, at his museum, not to be confused with Shakespeare's buddy Ben Jonson

 

Samuel Johnson (1775) showing his intense concentration and the weakness of his eyes; he did not want to be depicted as "Blinking Sam." This unique portrait showing his nearsightedness is in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, USA.

Samuel Johnson's birthplace Museum which you can visit in Lichfield, England.

Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [OS 7 September] – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson.

Johnson's travelling companion and biographer, Boswell.

I always used to muddle up the two Jonsons and their spelling but now I have got it clear. Samuel Johnson has the longer first name and family name. As befits the writer of a dictionary. 

But Ben Jonson, who lived earlier, at the time of Shakespeare, shortened the name Benjamin to Ben and abbreviated his surname to Jonson,  and was a humorous playwright. After Shakespeare Ben was second most popular with the general public as well as influential on other writers during the reign of James !. (James united England and Scotland, hence the union Jack flag, after the deaths of childless Protestant Elizabeth I and his mother Catholic Mary Queen of Scots.

Benjamin Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637^[2]) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's  exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour^[3] (1598), Volpone, or The Fox (c. 1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. "

He wrote, to Celia:

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup
And I'll not look for wine.

Useful Websites

US Civil War Cemetery Records and Water and Clara Barton

What caused the high number of deaths amongst captive soldiers in a US civil war camp?

The laws in the bible covered the basics of where to site your toilets, down stream of where you camped, so that sewage and used washing water did not contaminate drinking water. When I went to the USA I visited a Civil War camp memorial and cemetery.

I was struck by the way Clara Barton (the US equivalent of England's Florence Nightingale) had brought order to recording the burial sites so that families knew for certain who had died and where. Definite information enabled them to stop searching and hoping their relatives were alive. The widows and children could mourn and move on emotionally.

Importantly, they would also have the legal right to inherit and remarry. (In modern times the case of missing Lord Lucan has affected the right of the son to inherit the father's title and property.)

You can visit the Clara Barton birthplace museum and buy a book about her.

Clara Barton also involved in fund raising and distributing relief for the people of Galveston, the island off the south coast of Texas. Many people from he East End of London landed here in the South, instead of New York, under the encouragement of the writer Israel Zangwill, author of Children of the ghetto, called the Jewish Mark Twain).

http://clarabartonbirthplace.org/site/?q=node/14

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, researcher, author, speaker.