Richard Savage was an English poet. He is best known as the subject of Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage, originally published anonymously in 1744, which is based on one of the most elaborate of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets.

Samuel Johnson, often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history".