Literary Locations #1: Dr Johnson’s House

17 Gough Square
London
EC4A 3DE

Website: www.drjohnsonshouse.org 

Admission charge: £4.50 (Adult)

17 Gough Square is the former home of the eighteenth century lexicographer, writer and wit Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) whose best known work was his highly influential A Dictionary of the English Language. Published in 1755, this was the leading English dictionary for almost 130 years until the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary appeared in 1884. Johnson, who was commissioned to write the dictionary by a syndicate of London booksellers in 1746, had originally claimed that he would complete the work in three years. In the end this considerable feat of scholarship, which involved writing definitions for over 42,000 words and compiling 114,000 literary quotations to illustrate them, eventually took him nine. Johnson was immortalised by his friend and biographer James Boswell in his Life of Samuel Johnson, published in 1791.

In 1911 Johnson's former home was bought by the liberal politician and newspaper magnate Cecil Harmsworth. Since Johnson’s occupancy it had been put to a number of uses including a hotel, printer’s workshop and warehouse space and had fallen into a state of disrepair. Harmsworth spent a considerable amount of his own money conserving and renovating the house, following two rules – that nothing old should be taken out and that nothing new should be brought in – so that a visitor today can form a good impression of how it would have looked in Johnson’s day. Although he received a fee of 1,500 guineas (the equivalent of about £230,000 in today’s money) for his dictionary, Johnson spent much of his life in financial difficulty and this fact is reflected in the simple and modest way in which the house is furnished and decorated.

There are four floors of the house to visit, starting in the entrance hall which doubles as a gift shop selling a range of books as well as paperweights and tea towels. You then work your way up through the living room, library and eventually into the garret in which the work of compiling the dictionary was carried out. During World War 2, members of the Auxiliary Fire Service were allowed to use the house as a social centre and this proved invaluable in saving the building when it was hit by incendiaries and a barrel of burning oil during air raids– events which are still evidenced today by the scorched beams in the roof.

One feature that will enhance your visit to the house is the excellent audio commentary which is provided on a portable handset with headphones. This is well worth the additional £2.00 charge and will enable you to gain a much better appreciation of the features and history of the house as well as Johnson’s life and his circle of friends, including his Jamaican manservant Francis Barber and the actor David Garrick. You should allow about an hour for a self-guided tour around the house with the audio commentary.

Rating (out of 10): 8