Samuel Johnson, known as Dr. Johnson, (born Sept. 18, 1709, Lichfield, Staffordshire, Eng.

—died Dec. 13, 1784, London), English man of letters, one of the outstanding figures of 18th-century
England. The son of a poor bookseller, he briefly attended the University of Oxford. He moved to
London after the failure of a school he had started. He wrote for periodicals and composed poetry,
including The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), the first work he published under his name. In 1755,
after eight years of labour, he produced A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), the first great
English dictionary, which brought him fame. He continued to write for such periodicals as The
Gentleman’s Magazine, and he almost single-handedly wrote and edited the biweekly The Rambler
(1750–52). Rasselas (1759) was his only long work of fiction. In 1765 he produced a critical edition of
William Shakespeare with a preface that did much to establish Shakespeare as the centre of the
English literary canon. Johnson’s travel writings include A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
(1775). His Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets (1779–81) was a
significant critical work. A brilliant conversationalist, he helped found the Literary Club (1764), which
became famous for its members of distinction, including David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Oliver
Goldsmith, and Joshua Reynolds. His aphorisms helped make him one of the most frequently quoted
of English writers. The biography of Johnson written by his contemporary James Boswell is one of the
most admired biographies of all time.

Pemberley is the fictional country estate owned by Fitzwilliam Darcy, the male protagonist in
Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice. It is located near the fictional town of Lambton, and
believed by some to be based on Lyme Park,[1] south of Disley in Cheshire. In describing the estate,
Austen uses uncharacteristically explicit symbolism to represent the geographical home of the man at
the centre of the novel. On first visiting the estate, Elizabeth Bennet is charmed by the beauty of the
surrounding countryside, as indeed she is by Mr. Darcy himself. Elizabeth had already rejected Mr.
Darcy's first proposal by the time she visits Pemberley—it is his letter, the praise of his housekeeper,
and his own courteous behaviour at Pemberley that bring about a change in her opinion of Mr. Darcy.

John Agard’s “Listen Mr. Oxford Don” is a poem that looks at issues of language, ethnicity,
and immigration in a subversive and comical style. The poem is composed of nine stanzas of irregular
length, rhyme, and rhythm and the poet uses various poetic devices to subtly emphasize his frustration
with the superior attitude of the “Mr Oxford Don” with regards to immigrants like himself. Since the
representatives of the “Queen’s English” condemn foreigners such as himself for their use of
language, Agard’s rebellion will be a verbal one. The poem is written phonetically to reflect a
Caribbean accent.