Book reviewAcademy Dictionaries 1600–1800. . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. xii + 259 pp. ISBN 978-1-107-07112-4 £ 67.00
Table of contents
In this fine addition to his growing body of work on the history of dictionaries, John Considine takes as his subject the academy dictionary tradition, from 1600–1800, or in other words, from the appearance of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca in 1612 (although he very appropriately goes back well into the 16th century in investigating the origins of that dictionary) through to the period when the emergence of historical dictionaries began to transform the lexicographical landscape (ending with a brief look ahead to these). The volume is short (its main text runs to 173 pages, complemented by 50 pages of endnotes), but is broad and inclusive in its scope. Obviously, the Accademia della Crusca, the Académie française, and the dictionaries they produced take pride of place, as the key defining influences on the academy tradition – in the case of the Académie française, an influence that was felt internationally long before the eventual emergence of the first edition of the dictionary in August 1694. Beside these, Considine also takes in developments in Germany, Denmark, Spain, the United Provinces, Russia, Portugal, and Sweden – thus including all those countries where an academy actually produced a dictionary (such as the distinguished Diccionario de la lengua castellana of the Real Academia Española) as well as places like Germany, where the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft in the 17th century produced no dictionary as a corporate body, but had a significant influence on the lexicographical products of several of its members (as well as on developments in Denmark).