by Jack Lynch
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by Samuel Johnson
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Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr Johnson's Dictionary by Henry Hitchings |
The History of Rasselas: Prince of Abissinia (Oxford World's Classics) by D. J. Enright |
by Donald A. Cress
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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
Product Description
Two volumes thick and 2,300 pages long, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, published in 1755, marked a milestone in a language that, as Jonathan Swift and other writers had long lamented, was in desperate need of standards. The work of a great reader and writer, and an earnest compiler, it was the first English dictionary to devote so much space to everyday words; to be so resoundingly thorough in its definitions; and to illustrate usage by quoting from Shakespeare and other great writers.
For the next 150 years, the Dictionary would define the language until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary. Johnson's was the dictionary for Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Wordsworth and Coleridge, the Brontes and the Brownings, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde. Modern dictionaries owe much to Johnson's work.
This new edition, created by Levenger Press, contains more than 3,100 selections faithfully adapted from the original. Etymology, definitions, and illustrative passages appear in their entirety and are preserved in their original spelling. Bristling with quotations, the Dictionary offers a treasury of memorable passages on subjects ranging from books and critics to dreams and ethics. It also features three helpful new indexes created out of entries in this edition: Words found in Shakespeare's works; words from other great literary works; and piquant terms used in eighteenth-century discussions of such topics as law, medicine, and the sexes. Finally, Johnson's "The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language," which he wrote eight years before the Dictionary and which is seldom seen in print, is reproduced in its entirety.
To create his Dictionary, Johnson worked with the help of only six scribes and without benefit of a committee. Learned, curmudgeonly, passionate, and disciplined, he infused his work with a distinctive mix of scholarship, authority, and wit. For those who appreciate literature and love language, it is a browser's delight: An encyclopedia of the age and a dictionary for the ages.
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