This month we celebrate a leader in the English language, someone on par with the great English writings of William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson. As poet, satirist, critic, lexicographer, and dyed-in-the-wool conservative, Johnson’s birth was recorded in Lichfield, Staffordshire, England, on September 18, 1709. The tercentenary of Johnson’s birth just us cause to re-evaluate his influence on the modern dictionary as well as his contributions to English lexicography. Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language is the “work that defined the English language.” when printed in 1755.
Johnson is perhaps the most highly celebrated lexicographer of English. Conventional wisdom claims that Johnson solely conceived and produced A Dictionary of the English Language. Although he invested a number of years of full-time work to the Dictionary, Johnson wasn’t the first professional lexicographer. That distinction belongs to John Kersey, author of A New English Dictionary, published in 1702, 53 years prior. Also, it has been recorded the Johnson did not work alone; with the aid of
half a dozen assistants, and the history of lexicography tells us that assistants influence dictionary-making more than either eighteenth-century social hierarchies or the Great Author theory behind Johnson’s reputation admits.
Nor was Johnson’s the first dictionary to illustrate meaning and usage. John Florio’s Italian-English dictionary, A Worlde of Wordes was, in 1598, the first at least partially English dictionary to use quotations. Benjamin Martin had used sense divisions into dictionary entries in Lingua Britannica Reformata, published in 1749. Johnson proposed to “sort the several senses of each word, and to exhibit first its natural and primitive signification,” followed by “its consequential meaning,” and then “the remoter or metaphorical signification.” Whoever came up with it, no one doubts, in retrospect, that it was a good plan.
Unlike its predecessors, Johnson’s Dictionary was written on a grand scale, attempting to perfect the dictionary as a type of book and to change the terms on which dictionaries were valued by London’s literati. In contrast to earlier lexicography, Johnson’s dictionary entries—little critical essays about lexical form, meaning, and usage—talk in voices big enough to carry across the centuries.
Johnson inserted dictionaries into literary culture: He convinced readers that perfect cultivation of the human mind required a dictionary, preferably his Dictionary, not merely as a work of reference, but as a book worth reading for its own sake. Johnson’s great contribution to the history of English lexicography was to conceive the dictionary, not as a schoolroom prop, but as a type of literary work.
Johnson wrote only one dictionary, but in that one he initiated several dictionary genres. Definitions like those for oats, lexicographer, and excise
(“a hateful tax levied upon commodities and adjudged not by the common judges of property but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid”) were a form of cultural criticism. Though Johnson was not the first to employ literary quotations to illustrate usage and meaning, he was the first English lexicographer to conceive entries as necessarily incorporating quotations, the first to concentrate on quotations as an aspect of dictionary structure.
His refined use of quotations proposed yet another genre, “the quotations dictionary.”
The OED was first published (somewhat irregularly) in parts, and those interested in the English language subscribed, as though it were a periodical.
Today, we celebrate this epic tome of the school room, that which sits on a shelf of reverence in our homes, on a specific;y designed stand in a public place. Samuel Johnson might not have been the first to compose a list of English language words, though he is one of the most celebrated lexicographers in our past 300 years.
Johnson’s dictionary is most significant for the way it stimulated lexicography, raised the status and interest of the dictionary as a literary and cultural artifact, and generated new genres of dictionary. The Dictionary may effectively be the synopsis and epitome of Johnson’s genius.
as seen in HUMANITIES, September/October 2009, Volume 30, Number 5
My mantra in life is to read the book before seeing the movie version. In anticipation of the August release of Julie and Julia, starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Stanley Tucci, I am currently enjoying 
Since the release of Jeff Bezo’s release of the Kindle, and most recently the Kindle 2, I have been wondering the benefits of e-books v.s. a traditional book. What is the advantage of this new electronic medium? Is it better? Worse? Is there really a difference? How can an electronic device allow us to ‘read’ a text (book, newspaper, magazine etc) with the same enjoyment of our traditional paper medium? Internally, I debate its application in the library world. and its ability to promote literacy.
In conclusion, at 5-3 in favor of owning traditional books has the upper hand over a Kindle reader device, much of the debate is based upon your own personal taste and situation. Many friends and colleagues who travel frequently swear by their Kindle device. As the cruise ship goes down, they will be searching for an available life boat, I know they will have their Kindle in hand. Some of us prefer the immediately gratifying crack of a traditional books as it is opened for the first time, the smooth pages under our finger tips, the weight of it in our hands. On a personal note, while see my I Phone’s Kindle app as a fun application to play with on a long car trip, I will admit to succumbing to the pleasure of a book in my hands, the cream coloured pages revealing a text which engages my imagination. I prefer a traditional book, at this time. However, to best enjoy the literate world, it is up to each individual to select the device which works best for them, regardless of the situation they are in. Zombies not withstanding…..
