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The First English Dictionary 1604: Robert Cawdrey's 'A Table Alphabeticall'Stock informationGeneral Fields
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DescriptionHere is a real treat for lovers of English - the very first dictionary in our language. Contrary to popular opinion, this honour goes not to Samuel Johnson, whose definitive tome appeared in 1755, but to Robert Cawdrey, who published his Table Alphabeticall in 1604. Reviews"It is magicke, inchaunting, and makyth me to maffle and bleate. A fulgent thing, deserving of great claritude."-Stephen Fry "Previously, no-one had imagined what today seems so blindingly obvious, that a dictionary should run seamlessly, from A-Z ... It is difficult to overemphasize its importance to the English language."-Simon Winchester "This is a gnarled, rude, fierce old dictionary and utterly without `calliditie' (`craftiness, or deceit'). It may not provide much `clavicorde' (`mirth') and it certainly `maffles' (`stammers'), but it also `inchaunts' (`bewitches')."-New York Sun "Wordsmiths, your ship has come in: A new book-well, sort of new-should keep you pleasantly perusing till dawn. . . . Few books are as delightful as this compendium, thought to be the first alphabetical dictionary."-Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune Author descriptionJohn Simpson is formerly Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, the world's largest dictionary programme. He edited (with Edmund Weiner) the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, published to great acclaim in 1989. He is a member of the English Faculty at Oxford and of the Philological Society (where the idea of the Dictionary was first mooted in the 1850s), and a Fellow of Kellogg College. |