A Dictionary of the English Language: In which the words are deduced from their originals, ...To which are prefixed, A History of the Language, and an English Grammar. 4 volumes.

This is a rare or used book from the Berkelouw Rare Books Department.

London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805. Royal 8vo. Uniformly bound in marble-paper boards with morocco titling labels to spines. With engraved portrait in Volume I (off-setting present). Text printed in double-column. Rare 8vo edition. Fine. NOTE: Here offered is the work of Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), an Englishman, the son of a bookseller, a man of letters, a writer and lexicographer, and one of the most distinguished figures in English literary history. This is a fine edition in octavo of Johnson's magnum opus, A Dictionary of the English Language, or, as Johnson himself describes it in the preface to the edition in question, ''an abstract or epitome of my former work."(p. iii). The first edition was published in 1755 in folio and was intended 'for the use of such as aspire to exactness of criticism or elegance or style.'' (p.iii). With this edition, it was Johnson's intention rather to provide a "small dictionary", or ''a vocabulary of daily life'' (p. iii) for the Everyman. Johnson, having found all other dictionaries with like purpose deficient, assures the reader that, ''(t)he words of this dictionary, as opposed to others, are more diligently collected, more accurately spelled, more faithfully explained, and more authentically ascertained.'' (p. iv) And, to elucidate the meanings of words, Johnson calls on the great writers, e.g. Shakespeare, Milton, Drydon, Bacon, making this not only a dictionary, but a history of the English language in use (see Preface p. ic). This is one for the anglophile.