The Essay

Contemporary writers reflect on the linguistic shadow cast today by Samuel Johnson, the compiler of the first great dictionary of the English language. His monumental dictionary set the standard, and English would never be the same again. First Philip Hoare, winner of the 2009 prestigious Samuel Johnson prize for Leviathan, his non-fiction Moby Dick-inspired study of the whale, ponders the similarities between these mammals and words, and the disparities between Melville and Johnson.