Samuel Johnson's Dictionary : Selections from the 1755 Work That Defined the English Language

by Lynch, Jack

• ISBN13: 9780802715906
• ISBN10: 0802715907
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2007-01-09
• Publisher: Walker & Company

Summary

Samuel Johnson's 2,300-pageDictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, marked a milestone in a language that was in desperate need of standards. It was the first English dictionary to devote so much space to everyday words, to be so resoundingly thorough in its definition, and to illustrate usage by quoting from Shakespeare and other great writers. For the next 150 years, until the arrival of theOxford English Dictionary, Johnson'sDictionarywould define the language, used, as it was, by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Wordsworth and Coleridge--and by all of America's founding fathers. This new edition contains more than 3,100 selections faithfully adapted from the original by Jack Lynch. Etymology, definitions, and illustrative passages appear in their entirety. Three helpful new indexes have been created out of entries in this edition, and in addition, Johnson's "The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language," written eight years before theDictionaryand seldom seen in print, is reproduced in its entirety.

Author Biography

Jack Lynch is a professor of English at Rutgers University and a Johnson scholar. He is the author of The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson and the editor of A Bibliography of Johnson Studies, 1986-1998. He serves as joint editor of The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, and lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.