Samuel Johnson's Dictionary

About this book

Two volumes thick and 2 300 pages long Samuel Johnsons Dictionary published in 1755 marked a milestone in a language in desperate need of standards. No English dictionary before it had devoted so much space to everyday words been so thorough in its definitions or illustrated usage by quoting from Shakespeare and other great writers. Johnsons Dictionary would define the language for the next 150 years until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary. Johnsons was the dictionary used by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens Wordsworth and Coleridge the Bronts and the Brownings Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde. Modern dictionaries owe much to Johnsons work. This new edition created by Levenger Press contains more than 3 100 selections from the original including etymology definitions and illustrative passages in their original spelling. Bristling with quotations the Dictionary offers memorable passages on subjects ranging from books and critics to dreams and ethics. It also features three new indexes created out of entries in this edition: words found in Shakespeares 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 Johnsons "Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language " seldom seen in print which he wrote eight years before the Dictionary is reproduced in its entirety. For those who appreciate literature interpret the law and love language this a browsers delightan encyclopedia of the age and a dictionary for the ages.