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Nick Flanders
Professor Grego
Humanities 2249
April 23, 2014
Samuel Johnson & Edgar Allen Poe
The Enlightenment period began in the late 17
th
century and was a cultural
movement that stood on the morals of breaking down tradition and began a way of living that
was more individualistic. This shift lead to an era of using actual logic to reach conclusions
rather than relying purely on faith and tradition to guide your way to a result. During this time
period some of the most famous writers and political figures of world history arose. One very
important person in particular was an English author, poet, moralist and literary critic, Samuel
Johnson. Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to
be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little
trouble to acquire it. Samuel Johnson (Pettinger).
The Romantic era began at the end of the 18
th
century. This Romantic Movement began
in Europe and was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. During this period people began
to refute the strict structure of the Enlightenment period. This period was one of the strongest for
creativeness in all forms of art. One of the biggest names from the romantic period is Edgar
Allen Poe. Poe was an author, poet, editor, and literary critic. He was an adventurer into the
vaults and cellars and horrible underground passages of the human soul. He sounded the horror
and the warning of his own doom. D.H Lawrence (Lawrence).
Neither Samuel Johnson nor Edgar Allen Poe was born into wealthy families. Both
writers grew up to attend colleges, Samuel Johnson, Pembroke College Oxford. Edgar Allan Poe,
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The University of Virginia. Neither finished their degrees because both writers had to drop out
after a single year due to lack of financial support. Johnson and Poe had very different
beginnings besides their time at College. After Johnson left school he went on to marry a widow
twenty years older than him and went on to become one of the most famous writers of his time
period. After college Poe was in debt and joined the military, after this didnt work out he began
his writing career which was littered with deaths, alcohol, and gambling addictions.
These writers very different in many ways such as the actual type of writing they did.
Samuel Johnson spent most of his life writing for a journal column. This was his main source of
income for most of his life. Although Johnson mainly wrote non-fiction, he did try his hand in
poetry and such fiction before finally writing the Johnson Dictionary of the English language.
Although this wasnt the first dictionary written it was one of the most respected and granted him
his fame during life and continued to get praised for it long after his death. Edgar Allen Poe was
on the other side of the spectrum as an author. Poe was one of the most creative writers in
English history. He became one of the first to experiment with the short story. Poe would broke
the creative boundaries and wrote dark and twisted mystery tales about death and almost science
fiction themes.
Although different both shaped the future of literature into what it has become today.
Without Johnsons early help in the creation of the perfect dictionary writers like Poe may have
never have been able to fully learn the vocabulary that he used to write in his own respected
genre. Without Poe, the world may have had to wait who knows how many years it would have
took for someone dark enough to invent such genres as mystery and murder stories. Still to this
day his stories are used in classrooms around the world and he is widely celebrated as one of the
most brilliant minds to ever write in the mystery genre. Some of the most famous mystery novels
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characters are based off Poes work, such as Sherlock Holmes. Even though he is most famously
known for stories such as The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart, most people dont know he
also wrote stories on a much lighter note about adventures on the sea and buried pirate treasure.
These writers both died in very sad parts of their depression riddled lives. After
Johnsons wife died he was never able to pull himself out of the slump of depression and
eventually died in 1784 after a string of illnesses. Poes death although similar was much more
tragic. Throughout his life everyone around him died including wives, family and friends. This is
the reason he suffered from depression and had his addictions,
I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly
indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and
reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing
memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange
impending doom. Edgar Allan Poe (Good Reads)
On October 3, 1849 Poe was found in a state of needing immediate assistance by a random
citizen. He later died that day in the hospital. No clear sign of death was ever found but it had
been theorized is that it was due to alcoholism.







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Works Cited
Pettinger, Tejvan. "Samuel Johnson Biography." Biography Online. Bioonline, 22 Jan.
2013. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Multiple. "Edgar Allan Poe Quotes." Edgar Allan Poe Quotes (Author of The Tell-Tale Heart
and Other Writings). Goodreads, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Multiple. "Edgar Allan Poe." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Apr. 2014. Web. 20 Apr.
2014.
Pettinger, Tejvan. "Samuel Johnson Biography." Biography Online. Bioonline, 22 Jan. 2013.
Web. 23 Apr. 2014.