A Dictionary of the English Language;

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

in which The Words are deduced from their Originals Explained in their Different Meanings and Authorized by the Names of the Writers in whose Works they are found. Abstracted from the Folio Edition By Samuel Johnson A. M. To which is prefixed A Grammar of the English Language. 2 vols. ...London 1799. 8vo. Bound in original full old tree calf skilfully rebacked. Spines gilt with morocco title-labels. The bindings show signs of wear with chipping to the spine heads. The text is printed in double-column. The front endpaper bears the bookplate of John Pollock Esq. Rare octavo edition of Johnson's Dictionary. 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 Dryden Bacon making this not only a dictionary but a history of the English language in use (see Preface p. iv). This is one for the anglophile.