“A hundred visions and revisions”: Malone’s annotations to Johnson’s Dictionary
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Giovanni Iamartino
Abstract
This chapter deals with an annotated copy of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language. Between 1808 and 1811, Edmond Malone, the Shakespearian scholar and a member of Johnson’s literary club, added nearly three thousand notes to his copy of the Dictionary (now in the British Library) as his tribute to the importance of his friend’s extraordinary achievement and his personal contribution to improving on it. The chapter focusses on the A-E section of the Dictionary and the annotations found there (approximately, 20% of the total), and provides a qualitative analysis of them by discussing in turn new entries and new definitions penned by Malone, added quotations to already existing entries, new and revised etymologies, and miscellaneous notes. This is meant to show how research on early annotated copies of the Dictionary-a still neglected area in Johnsonian studies-may highlight educated dictionary users’ viewpoints, thus offering present-day researchers reliable and interesting data on the way Johnson’s lexicographical achievement was received by the cultural elite of his times.
Abstract
This chapter deals with an annotated copy of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language. Between 1808 and 1811, Edmond Malone, the Shakespearian scholar and a member of Johnson’s literary club, added nearly three thousand notes to his copy of the Dictionary (now in the British Library) as his tribute to the importance of his friend’s extraordinary achievement and his personal contribution to improving on it. The chapter focusses on the A-E section of the Dictionary and the annotations found there (approximately, 20% of the total), and provides a qualitative analysis of them by discussing in turn new entries and new definitions penned by Malone, added quotations to already existing entries, new and revised etymologies, and miscellaneous notes. This is meant to show how research on early annotated copies of the Dictionary-a still neglected area in Johnsonian studies-may highlight educated dictionary users’ viewpoints, thus offering present-day researchers reliable and interesting data on the way Johnson’s lexicographical achievement was received by the cultural elite of his times.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction VII
- Reading Trench reading Richardson 1
- Did Anne Maxwell print John Wilkins’s An essay towards a real character and a philosophical language (1668)? 23
- “As well for the entertainment of the curious, as the information of the ignorant” 57
- Printed English dictionaries in the National Library of Russia to the mid-seventeenth century 95
- “A hundred visions and revisions”: Malone’s annotations to Johnson’s Dictionary 115
- The use of “mechanical reasoning”: John Quincy and his Lexicon physico-medicum (1719) 149
- Paratexts and the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘content marketing’ in the nineteenth century? 165
- The “wants” of women: Lexicography and pedagogy in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury dictionaries* 187
- Claudius Hollyband: A lexicographer speaks his mind 211
- Subscribers and Patrons: Jacob Serenius and his Dictionarium Anglo-Svethico-Latinum 1734 237
- “Weak Shrube or Underwood”: The unlikely medical glossator John Woodall and his glossary 261
- A “florid” preface about “a language that is very short, concise and sententious” 285
- List of contributors 307
- Index 311
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction VII
- Reading Trench reading Richardson 1
- Did Anne Maxwell print John Wilkins’s An essay towards a real character and a philosophical language (1668)? 23
- “As well for the entertainment of the curious, as the information of the ignorant” 57
- Printed English dictionaries in the National Library of Russia to the mid-seventeenth century 95
- “A hundred visions and revisions”: Malone’s annotations to Johnson’s Dictionary 115
- The use of “mechanical reasoning”: John Quincy and his Lexicon physico-medicum (1719) 149
- Paratexts and the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘content marketing’ in the nineteenth century? 165
- The “wants” of women: Lexicography and pedagogy in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury dictionaries* 187
- Claudius Hollyband: A lexicographer speaks his mind 211
- Subscribers and Patrons: Jacob Serenius and his Dictionarium Anglo-Svethico-Latinum 1734 237
- “Weak Shrube or Underwood”: The unlikely medical glossator John Woodall and his glossary 261
- A “florid” preface about “a language that is very short, concise and sententious” 285
- List of contributors 307
- Index 311
