RICHARDSON, Charles

A New Dictionary of the English Language

London: 1839. Quarto (29cm). Two volumes in quarter brown leather, marbled paper-covered boards; yellow endpapers; vol. I: [iv],[1184]pp; vol. II: [ii],1185-[2223]pp. Bookplate of James G. Mead. Straight and sound, but rubbed, with amateur tissue repairs to joints (internal and external), board edges exposed, loss of leather to lower front corner of vol. II, and scattered foxing: Good.

Third complete edition of Richardson's dictionary, first published serially from 1818 and in collected form in 1836-37. Richardson's work was notable for its significant collections of "illustrative quotations drawn from literature," which "foreshadowed the Oxford English Dictionary" (Landau, p.66). Through these quotations, he "sought... to justify the preposterous theory of John Horne Tooke that each word had a single immutable meaning... In his own work, each word and its derivatives were given one etymology and one meaning" (Landau, Dictionaries: The Art & Craft of Lexicography 66). VANCIL, Catalog of Dictionaries, Word Books, and Philological Texts, 1440-1900, p.204.

Price: $400.00

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