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Author: Johnson, Samuel
Title: 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.
Place Published: Philadelphia
Publisher:Moses Thomas
Date Published: 1818
Description:

4 volumes. (4to) 23.5x14.5 cm (9¼x5½"), full marbled calf, leather spine labels titled in gilt. "First American from the Eleventh London Edition".

The first unabridged American edition of Johnson's Dictionary, possibly the most important book in the history of English. "Dr. Johnson performed with his Dictionary the most amazing, enduring and endearing one-man feat in the field of lexicography...It is the dictionary itself which justifies Noah Webster's statement that 'Johnson's writings had, in philology, the effect which Newton's discoveries had in mathematics'.

Johnson introduced into English lexicography principles which had already been accepted in Europe but were quite novel in mid-eighteenth-century England. He codified the spelling of English words; he gave full and lucid definitions of their meanings (often entertainingly coloured by his High Church and Tory propensities); and he adduced extensive and apt illustrations from a wide range of authoritative writers...but despite the progress made during the past two centuries in historical and comparative philology, Johnson's book may still be consulted for instruction as well as pleasure" (Printing and the Mind of Man). Indeed, the labor and genius of Johnson's production still awes us today. Over a period of eight years, "with no real library at hand, Johnson wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words...illustrating the senses in which these words could be used by including about 114,000 quotations drawn from English writing in every field of learning during the two centuries from the middle of the Elizabethan period down to his own time" (W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson, NY 1977, p.247).

Covers somewhat worn and scuffed, spine leather cracking and spine ends chipping; several ownership gift inscriptions on front endpapers, bookplate on pastedown, owner's name in early ink on title pages, library blindstamp to frontispiece in first volume and half titles of later, light soiling, very good.