Samuel Johnson and the “Shackles of Lexicography”

Mugglestone, Lynda

doi:10.1075/fillm.16.04mug

Part of

Words, Books, Images, and the Long Eighteenth Century: Essays for Allen Reddick
Edited by Antoinina Bevan Zlatar, Mark Ittensohn, Enit Karafili Steiner and Olga Timofeeva
[FILLM Studies in Languages and Literatures 16] 2021
► pp. 59–79

Samuel Johnson and the “Shackles of Lexicography”

Lynda Mugglestone | Pembroke College, University of Oxford

Article outline

The dictionary-maker and the problems of desire
Shackled lexicography in practice
“Shackled” reading: evidence, authority, and lexicographical process
The productive challenge of constraint
Notes
Bibliography

Published online: 16 December 2021

https://doi.org/10.1075/fillm.16.04mug

References (37)

Bibliography

Balderston, Katharine. “Johnson’s Vile Melancholy.” In The Age of Johnson: Essays Presented to Chauncey Brewster Tinker, edited by Frederick Hilles and Wilmarth Lewis, 3–14. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949.

Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. London: Peter Parker, 1676. Ms annotations by Samuel Johnson. Bodleian Library, Oxford. Dep. C.25/1.

Boswell, James. Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, rev. and enlarged L. F. Powell. 6 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.

Chapman, Robert, ed. The Letters of Samuel Johnson, with Mrs. Thrale’s Genuine Letters to Him. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Damrosch, Leo. The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends who Shaped an Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019.

DeMaria, Robert Jr. “The Theory of Language in Johnson’s Dictionary.” In Johnson after Two Hundred Years, edited by Paul Korshin, 159–74. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.

———. Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997.

[Dodsley, Robert]. “Review of The Plan of a DICTIONARY of the English Language.” The Museum: Or, the Literary and Historical Register 3. 1747: 385–90.

Gopnik, Adam. “Man of Fetters. Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale.” The New Yorker, December 8, 2008.

Hawkins, John. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Edited by O. M. Brack, Jr. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 2009.

Jack, Belinda. Reading. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language; in which the Words are deduced from their Originals and illustrated in their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers. 2 vols. London: W. Strahan, 1755; 4th ed. 1773.

———. An Account of the Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, from his Birth to his Eleventh Year, Written by Himself, to which are added, Original Letters to Dr. Samuel Johnson by Miss Hill Boothby. London: Richard Phillips, 1805.

. Diaries, Prayers, and Annals. Edited by Edward L. McAdam with Donald Hyde and Mary Hyde. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1958.

. Early Biographical Writings of Dr. Johnson. Edited by J. D. Fleeman (Farnborough: Gregg International, 1973).

. Poems. Edited by Edward L. McAdam, Jr., with George Milne. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975.

. A Voyage to Abyssinia. Edited by Joel J. Gold. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985.

. The Letters of Samuel Johnson, Vol. II: 1773–1776. Edited by Bruce Redford. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

. Johnson on the English Language. Edited by Gwin J. Kolb and Robert DeMaria, Jr. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005.

Lynch, Jack. “Lives of Johnson.” Claremont Review of Books, March 4, 2010. https://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/lives-of-johnson/.

Mallet, David. Amyntor and Theodora: or, the Hermit. London: Paul Vaillant, 1747.

Martin, Peter. Samuel Johnson: A Biography. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2008.

McCarthy, William. Hester Thrale Piozzi, Portrait of a Literary Woman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

McDermott, Anne. “Johnson the Prescriptivist? The Case for the Defence.” In Anniversary Essays on Johnson’s Dictionary, edited by Jack Lynch and Anne McDermott, 113–128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Meyers, Jeffrey. Samuel Johnson: The Struggle. New York: Basic Books, 2008.

Mugglestone, Lynda. Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

———. “The End of Toleration? Language on the margins in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary.” In Standardising English: Norms and Margins in the History of the English Language, edited by Linda Pillière, Wilfred Andrieu, Valérie Kerfelec, and Diana Lewis, 89–105. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Nokes, David. Samuel Johnson: A Life. London: Faber and Faber, 2009.

Porter, Roy. Mind-Forg’d Manacles. A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Reddick, Allen. The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, 1746–1773. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Richardson, Samuel. Selected Letters of Samuel Richardson, 1689–1761. Edited by John Carroll. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.

Segar, Mary. “Dictionary-making in the Early Eighteenth Century.” Review of English Studies. 1931: 210–13.

Snell, George. The Right Teaching of Useful Knowledg, to Fit Scholars for Som Honest Profession. London: John Stephenson, 1649.

Swift, Jonathan. A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue in a Letter to the Most Honourable Robert, Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, Lord High Treasurer of Great Britain. London: Benjamin Tooke, 1712.

Thrale, Hester. Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale (later Mrs. Piozzi) 1776–1809. Edited by Katharine Balderston. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951.

Weinbrot, Howard. Aspects of Samuel Johnson: Essays on his Arts, Mind, Afterlife, and Politics. Newark, N. J.: University of Delaware Press, 2005.

Zgusta, Ladislav. Lexicography Then and Now. Edited by Fredric Dolezal. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2006.