Background
In 1738 Johnson composed London, his first imitation of Juvenal's poetry, because imitations were popularized by those like Pope during the 18th century. When Johnson replaced Edward Cave with Robert Dodsley as his publisher, he agreed with Dodsley that he would need to change the focus of his poetry. Johnson's London is concerned primarily with political issues, especially those surrounding the Walpole administration, but The Vanity of Human Wishes focuses on overarching philosophical concepts.
In a conversation with George Steevens, Johnson recounted that he wrote the first seventy lines "in the course of one morning, in that small house behind the church". Johnson claimed that "The whole number was composed before I committed a single couplet to writing". In order to accomplish this feat, Johnson relied on a "nearly oral form of composition" which was only possible "because of his extraordinary memory". Johnson told Boswell that when he was writing poetry, he often "from laziness" only wrote down the first half of each line. This remark is borne out by the manuscript of The Vanity of Human Wishes, in which the first half of each line is written in a different ink to the second half; "evidently Johnson knew that the rime words would keep the second halves in mind." Although Johnson was busy after 1746 working on his Dictionary, he found time to further work on The Vanity of Human Wishes and complete his play, Irene.
The first edition was published on 9 January 1749. It was the first publication by Johnson to feature his name on the title page. It was not a financial success and only earned Johnson fifteen guineas. A revised version was published in the 1755 edition of Dodsley's anthology A collection of Poems by Several Hands. A third version was published posthumously in the 1787 edition of his Works, evidently working from a copy of the 1749 edition. However, no independent version of the poem was published during Johnson's life beyond the initial publication.
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