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JOHNSON, Samuel (1709-1784)
A Dictionary of the English Language in which the words are deduced from their originals, and illustrated in their different significations by examples from the best writers. London: W. Strahan for J. and P. Knapton, T. and T. Longman, C. Hitch and L. Hawes, A. Millar, and R. and J. Dodsley, 1755.
First edition, uncut in original boards, of ‘a monument of industry and talent [and] the unrivalled authority for the English language’ (Courtney and Smith p.54). Johnson’s achievement in compiling his great Dictionary was immediately recognised. In one of its earliest reviews, Adam Smith commended it, and Boswell called it a work of 'superior excellence'; it was the only work Johnson called 'my Book' (Letters I: 71). Not only did he provide lucid definitions and codify spelling but he provided c. 114,000 illustrative quotations, providing a compendium of excerpts from canonical works of English literature, meaning that even today it ‘may still be consulted for instruction as well as pleasure’ (PMM). Noah Webster claimed that it was to language what Newton’s discoveries were to mathematics.
Johnson's great literary labour, produced in the garret of his house in Gough Square, was published in 2,000 copies, and Fleeman estimated that over half may survive. Of these, only a ‘few copies survive in booksellers' boards, and all such have restored spines, for when standing upright, the contents are too heavy for the binding cords'. The present copy appears first to have had a calf/sheep spine before being rebacked in vellum; this would accord with the Bradley Martin copy in original blue paper boards with a leather spine. Other copies are bound in comb-marbled paper boards with a leather spine. The variety may be attributed to the various booksellers who collectively published the work. Other evidence of the priority of this set is the fact that it is has, unusually, both sheets 19D and 24O in the first setting. Of 13 copies examined by Todd, only one had both settings; 19D, which 'occurs very infrequently' in the first setting, has 58 textual variants in the second. Alston V, 177; Courtney and Smith p. 54; Chapman and Hazen p. 137; Fleeman I, p. 410; Grolier/English 50; PMM 201; Rothschild 1237; Todd, 'Variants in Johnson's Dictionary 1755', The Book Collector, XIV (1965), pp. 212-214.
2 volumes, folio (444 x 270mm). Titles in red and black, woodcut tail-pieces (occasional light spotting and toning, minor marginal repairs in title and second leaf). Original blue-paper boards, endleaves watermarked with a Bend and countermarked with AAB / DWB (similar to Heawood 63, early 18c), Thomas Edlin (active 1720—40s) engraved bookseller-binder ticket (cut down in vol. 2) mounted inside each volume (rebacked in vellum, replacing an earlier calf/sheep spine, front hinges of vol. I cracking, lightly rubbed, some light stains); modern red cloth chemises and slipcases.