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

Jack Lynch (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0802715907 | ISBN-13: 978-0802715906 | Publication Date: January 9, 2007

Samuel Johnson’s 2,300-page Dictionary 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 the Oxford English Dictionary, Johnson’s Dictionary would 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 the Dictionary and seldom seen in print, is reproduced in its entirety.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A fine new condensed version…it still rewards browsing far more than any other dictionary on the market.”—David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle

“If a dictionary can be said to have a personality, this one does…the great pleasure of such a book, [is] the way it returns language to us, expanding our ideas of what, exactly, English is…Lynch makes this monumental work manageable.”—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times

“An immensely useful tool for any Johnsonian, whether scholar or general reader, and performed with Lynch’s well-known learning and precision.”—Paul Fussell, author of Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing and The Great War and Modern Memory

“Through the years I was working on John Adams, I kept an original edition of Johnson’s Dictionary at hand, as I became increasingly aware that the meanings of words in his time were often very different than in our day. I think this new edition has done all present-day lovers of the English language and of the incomparable Dr. Johnson a great service.”—David McCullough

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 656 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company (January 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802715907
• ISBN-13: 978-0802715906
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,029,690 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jack Lynch is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. He's the author of a series of books and articles -- some for scholarly audiences, some for popular audiences -- on eighteenth-century culture, Samuel Johnson, William Shakespeare, the history of the English language, English grammar and style, reference books, and forgery, fakery, and fraud.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An all-star book available again for browsing, September 29, 2003

By 

Frank Lynch "frank_lynch" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (Hardcover)

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In the 18th century, dictionaries weren't just consulted, they were browsed. That was largely thanks to Samuel Johnson's mammoth 1755 achievement, wherein he defined not just the difficult words, but also common words found in everyday speech; to their definitions, he added illustrative quotations from the finest works -- creating a volume that was a pleasure to read, an education, and one which provoked the reader down long paths. If you have the AMS reprint of Johnson's Dictionary (reprinted in the 1970's) you know it's a heavy volume, and not easy to sit in your lap. But Jack Lynch has extracted over 3,000 of the entries into a volume you can not only hold in your lap, but enjoy reading: the print is not tiny, so it's no strain. And it's a pleasure to read.

Jack Lynch has also provided an informative, breezy introduction, which puts Johnson's Dictionary in the context or prior efforts and those that followed, describes Johnson's task and process, and tells you the impact that Johnson had. A wonderful addition is in the back, wherein there are some great footnotes (such as, Johnson's definition of war was part of a US Supreme Court decision regarding the US decision to bomb Kosovo) and a reverse index of the types of words to be found... Jack Lynch ALSO provides a special Shakespearean index -- so you can look up which words Johnson supported with quotations from The Bard.

I already had the 1970s reprint, as well as the Cambridge CD-ROM, and wasn't sure I needed this. But I'm glad I bought it, it's wonderful to have, even for me.<P...

(By the way, I am not related to Jack Lynch, so it's not like I'm a family member trying to boost his sales.)

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Still a Masterpiece, Just Wish This Ed Had More "Selections", November 14, 2003

By 

Brian Sawyer (Westford, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (Hardcover)

Though at heart I'm strictly an OED man, and at work I tend to use the more practical Merriam-Webster's, I've always had a special place in my heart for Samuel Johnson's masterpiece, and I've cherished my facsimile copy (never had the $10,000 an original copy would set me back).

I'm a huge fan of the quirky charm and literary excellence that went into this unabashedly biased dictionary, so I giddily anticipated this new edition. After flipping through it at the bookstore, however, I was a little disappointed that it didn't offer much over my old facsimile copy. Though the new edition does include Johnson's original "Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language," I have that printed in another volume, and the reduction of the book to "selections" really cuts the book too short to warrant my buying it again.

That said, the entries that made the cut are still fabulous. You have to love a lexicographer ("a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge") who had the courage, interest, and patience to write an entire dictionary by himself but also had the modesty to admit that any mistakes were due to "ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance."

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Amateurish edition, unworthy of a great work, August 5, 2007

By 

A bookish fellow (Juneau, AK USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (Hardcover)

It's great fun to see a portable edition of the 'dixonary' as Thackeray's headmistress called it. However, this edition from the purveyors of the upscale office furnishings catalog needs a lot more editing and polishing. The Greek in the derivations, for one thing, is atrociously copyedited, replete with mistranscribed letters and spelling mistakes, and completely missing accentuation. This is unforgivable; Johnson, though no Classical scholar, tried to be scrupulously correct in his Greek spelling and accentuation. Johnson's English orthography is mostly updated to 21st century conventions, except when it randomly isn't. (The introduction says no updating has taken place. This is not true.) There is no information given about the editor, or his methods, which makes the whole work a bit suspect.

There are much better editions of the 'Dixonary' out there. Please, find a better one!