Books

29 x 23.5 cm. Quarto. Unpaginated. Engraved frontispiece portrait of Johnson in volume 1 from a painting by Joshua Reynolds. With half-title in volume 1. Bound into full brown leather with gilt decorations. Spines have been professionally re-backed, preserving some of the original spines but they show some cracking. Covers show some restoration work. New endpapers. Internally quite nice with little foxing. Text in three columns. Nice 18th century edition of Johnson's monumental Dictionary. This edition was published shortly after Johnson's death and contains many revisions from the 4th edition. Prefixed by the original Preface and History of the English Langauge, &c. and Grammer of the English tongue. There was no folio sixth edition done, just this quarto edition was published. References: Alston, "A Bibliography of the English Language from the invention of printing to the year 1800" Volume V #186. Courtney & Smith, "A Bibliography of Samuel Johnson" p 57. ESTC T116655. Fleeman 55.4D/8. OCLC: 2080566. PMM 201 (first edition).

Samuel Johnson's 'A Dictionary of the English Language' is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language. First published on 15 April 1755, the dictionary offered comprehensive definitions and illustrative examples of usage.