Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1781) was a work by Samuel Johnson, comprising short biographies of about 50 poets, most of whom were alive in the eighteenth century. It is arranged, approximately, by date of death. The poets included were:

Abraham Cowley - Sir John Denham - John Milton - Samuel Butler (Hudibras) - John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester - Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon - Thomas Otway - Edmund Waller - John Pomfret - Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset - George Stepney - John Philips - William Walsh - John Dryden - Edmund Smith - Richard Duke - William King - Thomas Sprat - Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax - Thomas Parnell - Samuel Garth - Nicholas Rowe - Joseph Addison - John Hughes - John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham - Matthew Prior - William Congreve - Sir Richard Blackmore - Elijah Fenton - John Gay - George Granville, Lord Lansdown - Thomas Yalden - Thomas Tickell - James Hammond - William Somervile - Richard Savage - Jonathan Swift - William Brome - Alexander Pope - Christopher Pitt - James Thomson - Isaac Watts - Ambrose Philips - Gilbert West - William Collins - John Dyer - William Shenstone - Edward Young - David Mallet - Mark Akenside - Thomas Gray - George Lord Lyttelton