Small Dictionaries and Curiosity tells a story which has not been told before, that of the first European wordlists of minority and unofficial languages and dialects, from the end of the Middle Ages to the early nineteenth century. These wordlists were collected by people who were curious about the unrecorded or little-known languages they heard around them. Between them, they document more than 40 language varieties, from a Basque-Icelandic pidgin of the North Atlantic to the Kalmyk language of the lower Volga. The book gives an account of about 90 of these dictionaries and wordlists, some of them single-page jottings and some of them full-sized printed books, paying attention to their content and their physical form alike. It explores the kinds of curiosity and imagination by which their makers were moved: the lover of all languages hearing new voices in an inn; the speaker of a dying language recording his linguistic memories; the patriot deploying his lexicographical findings in the service of an emerging nation. It offers an encounter with the diverse voices of the entirety of post-medieval Europe, turning away from the people of the courts and universities whose language was documented in big dictionaries to listen to people who did not speak the languages of power: the people of remote places and dying communities; the illiterate poor, settled or homeless; migrants from the edges of Europe and beyond.

Small Dictionaries and Curiosity: Lexicography and Fieldwork in Post-Medieval Europe

History

Considine, John

Europe

Oxford University Press

This is the first volume in the trilogy Dictionaries in the English-Speaking World, 1500-1800, which will offer a new history of lexicography in and beyond the early modern British Isles. The volume explores the dictionaries, wordlists, and glossaries that were compiled and read by speakers of English from the end of the Middle Ages to the year 1600. These include the first printed dictionaries in which English words were collected; the dictionaries of Latin used by all educated English-speakers, from young children to Shakespeare to adult royalty; the dictionaries of modern languages that gave English-speakers access to the languages and cultures of continental Europe; dictionaries and wordlists documenting other languages from Armenian to Malagasy to Welsh; and a great variety of specialized English wordlists. No unified history has ever surveyed this vast, lively, and culturally significant lexicographical output before. The guiding principle of the book, and the trilogy, is that a story about dictionaries must also be a story about human beings. John Considine offers a full and sympathetic account of those who compiled and used these works, and those who supported them financially, paying particular attention to records of dictionary use and its traces in surviving copies. The volume will appeal to all those interested in the languages and literary cultures of the sixteenth-century English-speaking world.

Sixteenth-Century English Dictionaries (Dictionaries in the English-speaking World, 1500-1800)

World

Dictionaries tell stories of many kinds. The history of dictionaries, of how they were produced, published and used, has much to tell us about the language and the culture of the past. This monumental work of scholarship draws on published and archival material to survey a wide range of dictionaries of western European languages (including English, German, Latin and Greek) published between the early-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. John Considine establishes a powerful model for the social and intellectual history of lexicography by examining dictionaries both as imaginative texts and as scholarly instruments. He tells the stories of national and individual heritage and identity that were created through the making of dictionaries in the early modern period. Far from dry, factual collections of words, dictionaries are creative works, shaping as well as recording early modern culture and intellectual history.

Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe: Lexicography and the Making of Heritage

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Cambridge University Press

Dictionaries tell stories of many kinds. The history of dictionaries, of how they were produced, published and used, has much to tell us about the language and the culture of the past. This monumental work of scholarship draws on published and archival material to survey a wide range of dictionaries of western European languages (including English, German, Latin and Greek) published between the early-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. John Considine establishes a powerful model for the social and intellectual history of lexicography by examining dictionaries both as imaginative texts and as scholarly instruments. He tells the stories of national and individual heritage and identity that were created through the making of dictionaries in the early modern period. Far from dry, factual collections of words, dictionaries are creative works, shaping as well as recording early modern culture and intellectual history.

John Considine is Assistant Professor of English, University of Alberta, Canada; Sylvia Brown is Associate Professor of English, University of Alberta, Canada

Guides to Foreign Languages for Women (1537–1699)

Brown, Sylvia

Routledge

The ladies dictionary, being a general entertainment for the fair-sex was published on 19 March 1694 by John Dunton. No compiler was named on the title page, but the dedication by 'the author' addressed 'to the Ladies, Gentlewomen, and Others, of the Fair-Sex' was signed 'N. H.' The book offers around 1950 lexical and encyclopaedic entries, the great majority excerpted either verbatim or with some degree of abridgement or adaptation from other published books. It was the first substantial reference book to be published in England with women as its principal target audience, and was arguably the first alphabetically-arranged encyclopaedia to be published in English. The editor's introduction in this edition starts with an overview of the publisher John Dunton, and goes on to discuss the compilers of LD; its sources; its editing, printing and proof-reading; and its advertising, publication and afterlife. It concludes with lists of primary and secondary sources (including all the identified sources of LD). The reproduction of the dictionary that follows is from the Robert H. Taylor collection at Princeton. Because LD is irregularly alphabetized, the reproduction is followed by a new index of entries in strict alphabetical order, with their sources identified.

N.H., The Ladies Dictionary (1694)

British & Irish

Elizabeth Elstob's Writings on Anglo-Saxon (1709–1715?)

This is the first unified history of the large, prestigious dictionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, compiled in academies, which set out to glorify living European languages. The tradition began with the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1612) in Florence and the Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise (1694) in Paris, and spread across Europe - to Germany, Spain, England, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Russia - in the eighteenth century, engaging students of language as diverse as Leibniz, Samuel Johnson, and Catherine the Great. All the major academy and academy-style dictionaries of the period up to 1800, published and unpublished, are discussed in a single narrative, bridging national and linguistic boundaries, to offer a history of lexicography on a European scale. Like John Considine's Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2008), this study treats dictionaries both as physical books and as ambitious works of the human imagination.

Academy Dictionaries 1600–1800

Reference

This is the first unified history of the large, prestigious dictionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, compiled in academies, which set out to glorify living European languages. The tradition began with the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1612) in Florence and the Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise (1694) in Paris, and spread across Europe - to Germany, Spain, England, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Russia - in the eighteenth century, engaging students of language as diverse as Leibniz, Samuel Johnson, and Catherine the Great. All the major academy and academy-style dictionaries of the period up to 1800, published and unpublished, are discussed in a single narrative, bridging national and linguistic boundaries, to offer a history of lexicography on a European scale. Like John Considine's Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2008), this study treats dictionaries both as physical books and as ambitious works of the human imagination.

Meaning "provided with marginal annotations," marginated neatly describes the items featured in this extensively researched catalogue. From presentation inscriptions to readers' commentaries to children's doodles, the variety of annotations that appear in these 17th-century books gives unique insight into the lives of their readers-and, indeed, into the lives of the books, as they passed from owner to owner. This catalogue was published to accompany a 2010 exhibit at the University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections Library and features items from the Library's collection.

Marginated: Seventeenth-Century Printed Books and the Traces of Their Readers (Bruce Peel Special Collections)

Arts & Photography

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

University of Alberta Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Considine, John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Considine, John

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Considine, John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Small Dictionaries and Curiosity: Lexicography and Fieldwork in Post-Medieval Europe

Sixteenth-Century English Dictionaries (Dictionaries in the English-speaking World, 1500-1800)

Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe: Lexicography and the Making of Heritage

Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe: Lexicography and the Making of Heritage

Guides to Foreign Languages for Women (1537–1699)

N.H., The Ladies Dictionary (1694)

Elizabeth Elstob's Writings on Anglo-Saxon (1709–1715?)

Academy Dictionaries 1600–1800

Academy Dictionaries 1600–1800

Marginated: Seventeenth-Century Printed Books and the Traces of Their Readers (Bruce Peel Special Collections)