Exhibitions
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1755-2005: Dr Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language
11th April - 30th June 2005
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary was first published 250 years ago, on 15 April 1755. Renowned as Samuel Johnson is as a writer and a leading intellectual figure of the eighteenth century, the Dictionary is perhaps his main claim to fame. The Dictionary of National Biography describes Johnson as a lexicographer, the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as an author and lexicographer. Johnson began work on the Dictionary in 1747. His employers for the task were a group of eminent booksellers headed by Robert Dodsley; his remuneration, 1,500 guineas, out of which he had to pay his six copyists. The object was, in Johnson’s words, ‘to produce a dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained and its duration lengthened’.
Johnson’s Dictionary rapidly became a standard authority and remained unrivalled until the appearance of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1888 onwards. It and the Oxford English Dictionary constitute the two great landmarks in English lexicographical history.
Dictionarium Britannicum
Nathan Bailey
2nd ed.
London: T. Cox, 1736
33.d.9
Nathan Bailey’s Dictionarium Britannicum, which first appeared in 1730, incorporates and replaces his Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721, with a second volume appearing in 1727). It remained popular throughout the eighteenth century. Johnson used the 1736 edition of Bailey’s dictionary as the basis of his own lexicon, working from an interleaved copy, while often deviating from Bailey in his derivations of words. Johnson’s innovations included consultation of technical and specialist manuals to expand the range of vocabulary, and the inclusion of illustrative quotations from a wide range of works.
A Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 1
Samuel Johnson
London: J. and P. Knapton et al., 1755
[S.L.] I [Johnson - 1755] fol.
This is the first edition of Johnson’s famous Dictionary, which Johnson originally had hoped to have finished by the end of 1750. The Dictionary contains over 40,000 words, illustrated by approximately 114,000 quotations taken from every field of learning and literature from Sidney onwards, albeit with the deliberate exclusion of irreligious writers. These quotations form an anthology of moral sayings and helped to define the canon of literature. The organisation of each entry under a headword to exemplify graduated senses of a term was a procedure which redirected the course of English lexicography. Only the derivations detract from the general quality, suffering from the scant etymological knowledge of Johnson’s time.
A Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 2
Samuel Johnson
4th edn
Dublin: T. Ewing, 1775
32.c.13
Johnson’s Dictionary ran through five editions in his lifetime, of which the fourth edition stands out for having been extensively revised by Johnson. The copy here is open at the page including the definition for pension: ‘An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country’. (Johnson was undecided as to whether he should accept a pension when one was offered to him in 1762.) This is one of the handful of famous playful definitions in Johnson’s work: others include lexicographer, ‘a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge’, and patron, ‘One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.’
A Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 1
Samuel Johnson; rev. by Henry John Todd
London: Longman, Hurst, Orme, and Brown et al., 1818
[D.-L.L.] A4C [Johnson] fol.
A cheaper quarto version of Johnson’s Dictionary continued to appear at regular intervals after his death. Of the several editors who offered to augment, abstract and otherwise improve Johnson’s work, the Reverend Henry John Todd’s edition of 1818 was the main result. Todd in his preface calls Johnson Dictionary a wonderful achievement of genius and labour and describes his own work as dust in the balance, when weighed against the work of Dr Johnson. The nature of Todd’s amendments are summarised on the title page, shown above; Todd’s own efforts faced severe criticism after the middle of the nineteenth century.
(Three postcards)
Dr Johnson moved into a house in Gough Square to compile the Dictionary, living there between 1748 and 1759; the house is now a museum in his honour. Two of the postcards here show the outside of the house, as a watercolour by E.W. Haslehust (1866-1949), and as a photograph. The third shows the garret, which Johnson used as a workroom for his six copyists. The cards have been provided by the courtesy of Dr Johnson’s House.
The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language
Samuel Johnson
London: J. and P. Knapton et al., 1747
[S.L.] I [Johnson - 1747]
Samuel Johnson’s Plan of a Dictionary describes the purpose and method of his Dictionary. Boswell explains that Johnson’s addressee, the Earl of Chesterfield was ‘very ambitious of literary distinction, and … had expressed himself in terms very favourable to its [the Dictionary’s] success’. Johnson explained the inscription to the Earl of Chesterfield as follows: ‘I had neglected to write it [the Plan] by the time appointed. Dodsley suggested a desire to have it addressed to Lord Chesterfield. I laid hold of this as a pretext for delay, that it might be better done … I said to my friend, Dr. Bathurst, "Now if any good comes of my addressing to Lord Chesterfield, it will be ascribed to deep policy", when in fact, it was only a casual excuse for laziness’.
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., vol. 1
James Boswell
London: C. Dilly, 1791
[S.L.] I [Boswell - 1791] fol.
Boswell’s celebrated biography of Johnson is a major source of external knowledge about the Dictionary. In addition to Johnson’s explanation of the addressee of his Plan of a Dictionary, cited here, it covers such matters as the planning and compilation of the Dictionary more generally, its great merits and minor faults, its quotations from Francis Bacon, and the fourth edition. Boswell’s anecdotes include Johnson’s riposte to William Adams’s doubt about Johnson’s ability to complete the Dictionary in three years, when the French Academcy, consisting of forty members, required forty years to compile its dictionary: ‘Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.’
Three Philological Essays
John Christopher Adelung
London: T. Longman, 1798
Ac [Adelung]
The German linguist and lexicographer John Christopher Adelung (1732-1806) examined Johnson’s Dictionary in the context of his own labours to produce an English-German dictionary. The title of his essay about it, ‘On the Relative Merits and Demerits of Johnson’s English Dictionary’, reflects accurately the ambivalence of Adelung’s stance. He describes Johnson’s work as ‘replete with great imperfections’ and speaks of endeavouring to improve upon it, but concludes: ‘The merit of this Dictionary is so great, that it cannot detract from it, to take notice of some defects’, ‘Any man who is about to compose a dictionary, or rather a grammar of the English language, must acknowledge himself indebted to Mr. J. for abridging at least on half of his labour’, and: ‘Its merits must be determined by the frequent resort, that is had to it’.
An Unfinished Letter to the Right Honourable William Pitt Concerning the New Dictionary of the English Language
Sir Herbert Croft
London: [privately printed], 1788
Porteus Library B.P.99
Sir Herbert Croft (1751-1816) had a long-standing interest in lexicography, and especially in Johnson's Dictionary. His manuscripts concerning it amounted to 200 quarto volumes in 1787. Croft was critical of Johnson’s work: his Unfinished Letter, like several papers by Croft in the Gentleman's Magazine, pointed out some of its defects. The noun ‘defects’ appears frequently in Croft’s letter. Describing Johnson’s Dictionary as a failure, Croft proposed to supplant it with his own. Lack of subscriptions forced to abandon his project for this four-volume work, to have been priced at twelve guineas.
Vanity Fair
William Thackeray
London: Macmillan, 1911
[S] YN T42T 911
In Vanity Fair, first published in book form in 1848 and set in the teens of the nineteenth century, Thackeray makes plain the established nature of Johnson’s Dictionary as a reference work. Miss Pinkerton, who constantly refers to Johnson, invariably presents the scholars departing from her academy for young ladies with a copy of the work (price two shillings and nine pence). She is shown here inscribing a copy to Amelia Sedley, with a bust of Johnson in the background. Chapter one ends with the anti-heroine, Becky Sharp, flinging her copy out of the carriage window back into the academy garden. Becky’s repudiation of the Dictionary is an act of rebellion equivalent to her parting cries of ‘Vive la France! Vive l’Empereur! Vive Bonaparte!’
