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PREVIOUS DICTIONARIES There had been several dictionaries written in Latin , English , French and Italian prior to Johnson. Benjamin Martin's ''Lingua Britannica Reformata'' ( 1749 ) and Ainsworth's ''Thesaurus Linguae Latinae'' ( 1737 ) are both significant, in that they define entries in separate senses, or aspects of the word. In English (among others) John Cowell's ''Interpreter'', a law dictionary, was published in 1607 , Edward Phillips' ''The new world of English words'' came out in 1658 and a dictionary of 40,000 words had been prepared in 1721 by Nathan Bailey, though none was as comprehensive in breadth or style as Johnson's. JOHNSON'S PREPARATION Johnson's dictionary was prepared at 17 Gough Square , London , an eclectic household, between the years of 1746 and 1755. By 1747 Johnson had written his ''Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language'', which spelled out his intentions and proposed methodology for preparing his document. He clearly saw benefit in drawing from previous efforts, and saw the process as a parallel to legal precedent (possibly influenced by Cowell): "I shall therefore, since the rules of stile, like those of law, arise from precedents often repeated, collect the testimonies of both sides, and endeavour to discover and promulgate the decrees of custom, who has so long possessed whether by right or by usurpation, the sovereignty of words." JOHNSON'S VERSION The dictionary has a word list of 42,773 words. An important innovation of Johnson's was to illustrate the Meaning s of his words by Literary quotation, of which there are around 114,000. The authors most frequently cited by Johnson include Shakespeare , Milton and Dryden . Furthermore, Johnson, unlike Bailey, added notes on a word's usage, rather than being merely descriptive. Unlike most modern is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people" (it ought perhaps to be noted that the latter is arguably a legitimate observation, and moreover is not a significant departure from Bailey's "a grain, food for horses"). Johnson's , and it was also linguistically conservative, advocating traditional spellings, for example ''olde'', rather than the simplifications that would be favoured 73 years later by Noah Webster . In spite of whatever shortcomings it might have had, the dictionary was far and away the best of its day, a milestone in English-language lexicography to which all modern dictionaries owe some gratitude. Johnson's dictionary was still considered authoritative until the appearance of the '' Oxford English Dictionary '' at the end of the nineteenth century. Sales The first edition of the dictionary appeared in two Folio volumes. As of 2002 a first edition might sell for US$25,000 to US$30,000, but many later editions and facsimiles have appeared. In 1995 , in the UK, a facsimile of the first edition cost £200 (approximately US$300). Contemporary selections from Johnson's dictionary are available in ''Samuel Johnson's Dictionary'', ISBN 0802714218. A CD-ROM version is currently available for PC Windows and Macintosh systems (N.B. For system 9, not for OS X) from Cambridge University Press , featuring the first (1755) and fourth ( 1783 ) editions, viewable in both facsimile and searchable text form. REFERENCES Books
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