Bibliographies

A new bibliography of primary materials compiled by J. D. Fleeman — A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson, Treating His Published Works from the Beginnings to 1984, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000) — has now definitively superseded the old one by William P. Courtney and D. Nichol Smith, A Bibliography of Samuel Johnson, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925) and its supplement by R. W. Chapman and Allen T. Hazen, "Johnsonian Bibliography: A Supplement to Courtney," Proceedings of the Oxford Bibliographical Society 5 (1939), 119-66. It's a masterpiece of bibliography, and while its two thousand crowded pages will overwhelm the beginner, specialists can't do without.

A series of bibliographies by Clifford, Greene, and Vance covers most of the scholarship on Johnson in the last century: James Clifford and Donald J. Greene, Samuel Johnson: A Survey and Bibliography of Critical Studies (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1970) will get you through 1969 or so (it's in fact a combination of two earlier volumes), and Donald J. Greene and John A. Vance, A Bibliography of Johnsonian Studies, 1970-1985 (Victoria: Univ. of Victoria, 1987) goes much of the rest of the way. I've added my own modest efforts, in an on-line bibliography covering 1986 to the present.

A more specialized bibliography: Samuel Johnson's Library: An Annotated Guide, ed. Donald J. Greene (Victoria: English Literary Studies, 1975), is a guide to the books in Johnson's library.

This is part of a Guide to Samuel Johnson by Jack Lynch. Comments are welcome.