Victorian Literature Dictionaries
by
Lynda Mugglestone
  • LAST MODIFIED: 07 January 2025
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199799558-0223

Introduction

By 1832 most modern lexicographic conventions were already well established. Numbered sense-divisions in dictionary entries, as well as illustrative quotations or examples, were familiar features. So was information on pronunciation. The advent of the International Phonetic Alphabet in 1888 brought new possibilities for consistent transcription though many dictionaries continued to employ their own, often idiosyncratic, systems. A rich and diverse lexicographic culture was in existence with dictionaries adapted to a range of readers and roles. In some respects, there were obvious continuities with the past. Samuel Johnson, whose Dictionary of the English Language was first published in 1755, John Walker (author of the Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, 1791) and Noah Webster (whose American Dictionary of the English Language was first published in 1828) remained household names, in Britain and in the United States, with their works variously reedited, enlarged, and recombined. Benjamin Smart’s Walker Remodelled (1842) meanwhile brought Walker up to date, codifying what was seen as the social and linguistic salience of a supra-regional Received Pronunciation, a construct formalized in 1869. Webster’s legacy dominated American dictionary making while spurring new and important competitors in the form of work by Joseph Worcester and, toward the end of the century, William Dwight Whitney. Innovative methods and empirical approaches also emerged. Charles Richardson (New Dictionary of the English Language, 1836–1837) experimented with citational evidence instead of definitions for each entry, pioneering aspects of the inductive method while placing usage at the center of lexicographical exegesis. Advances in the synonym dictionary meanwhile produced Peter Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (1852). General or family dictionaries also flourished, aided by advances in literacy and the consolidation of a national education system. Johnson in 1755 had questioned whether lexicography should focus on words or things. Victorian dictionaries represented both strands though the consensus (in British lexicography), gradually inclined to the former. American lexicography meanwhile often remained far more encyclopedic in its interests and coverage. Notable outliers in Britain included John Ogilvie’s Imperial Dictionary of the English Language (1852–1853) that, in three volumes, included copious illustrations and diagrams and was visibly inspired by Webster’s work. The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (later known as the Oxford English Dictionary) began publication in 1884 (–1928). Inspired by Continental philology, it brought a new commitment to descriptive historicism and remains groundbreaking in its documentation of English, both past and present, as well as in its painstaking reappraisal of English etymology and derivation. Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary (EDD), the first part of which appeared in 1898, adopted similar methods while regional lexicography received new impetus from the English Dialect Society (1873–). Across the period, the diversity of English (and Englishes) proved a highly fertile space.

General Overviews

Béjoint 2000 provides the most useful overview of English dictionaries and dictionary making, especially in relation to the data-driven practices and intended objectivity that came to characterize the later nineteenth century, while Ogilvie and Safran 2020 provides local and global contexts for a range of lexicographical works and approaches. The edited collections Durkin 2016 and Cowie 2008 provide useful introductions to specific topics, writers, and genres, including pronouncing dictionaries. In terms of intellectual background, Momma 2013 traces relevant shifts in linguistic thinking, especially with reference to the salience of philology and what was increasingly referred to as the historical or scientific method. The latter, and its lexicographical implementation, is also explored in detail in Considine 2016. Mugglestone 2004 and Mugglestone 2016 nevertheless document the ways in which prescriptive and descriptive approaches continued to exhibit markedly fuzzy borders across a range of Victorian works. Seen historically, the intersections (and legacies) of earlier work by Samuel Johnson (in the United Kingdom) and by Noah Webster (in America) are productively examined in Brewer 2008, while Murray 1900 remains a valuable overview of earlier and recent work, and its significance, written by the first editor-in-chief (1878–1915) of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Works such as Hancher 2019 meanwhile, provide a detailed examination of specific text conventions and domains, and the changes that these came to reveal across this period.

  • Adams, Michael. “The Lexical Object: Richardson’s New Dictionary of the English Language (1836–1837).” In The Whole World in a Book: Dictionaries in the Nineteenth Century. Edited by Sarah Ogilvie and Gabriella Safran, 34–53. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

    Adams evaluates Richardson’s methodology, and his contributions to etymology as well as meaning within his innovative dictionary while usefully emphasizing the contributions that Richardson made in relation to subsequent linguistic and lexicographical thinking.

  • Béjoint, Henri. Modern Lexicography. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

    DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198299516.001.0001

    This comprehensive overview provides a thorough account of the aims and methodologies of lexical codification, tracking the shifting perspectives on methodology, data, and objectivity in the move to modern dictionary making.

  • Brewer, Charlotte. “Johnson, Webster, and the Oxford English Dictionary.” In A Companion to the History of the English Language. Edited by Haruko Momma and Michael Matto, 113–121. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.

    A thoughtful and detailed consideration of the continuities of earlier dictionary making, British and American, and its import for Victorian work, including the making of the first edition of the OED.

  • Considine, John. “Historical Dictionaries: History and Development; Current Issues.” In The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography. Edited by Philip Durkin, 163–175. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

    A thorough examination of the emergence of historical lexicography, and its foundational principles, with reference to a wide range of primary works.

  • Cowie, Anthony P., ed. The Oxford History of English Lexicography. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

    The two volumes of this edited collection document both shifting patterns of praxis and methodology as well as, in the second volume, provide a detailed analysis of a range of individual practitioners and their work in local and global contexts.

  • Durkin, Philip, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

    An invaluable collection of articles that explore foundational aspects of dictionaries and dictionary making, with specific reference to English and Englishes.

  • Hancher, Michael. “Dictionary vs. Encyclopedia, Then and Now.” Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 40 (2019): 113–138.

    DOI: 10.1353/dic.2019.0003

    An informative and theoretically rich account of the tension between words and things as objects of lexicographic practice, and the shifting generic identities that reference books (and their contents) variously came to claim within this period. It provides a very useful discussion of the Victorian OED, and its resistance to models favored by American dictionary making.

  • Momma, Haruka. From Philology to English Studies Language and Culture in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

    Momma explores the history and consolidation of philological thinking, and its increasing dominance in linguistic culture during the Victorian period, especially in relation to evidence and empiricism in relation to historical change and derivation.

  • Mugglestone, Lynda. “Departures and Returns: Writing the English Dictionary in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” In The Victorians and the Eighteenth Century: Reassessing the Tradition. Edited by Francis O’Gorman and Katherine Turner, 144–162. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004.

    Engages specifically with Victorian perspectives on earlier dictionary making, and the critical shifts in lexicographic culture and praxis that dictionary makers aimed to institute.

  • Mugglestone, Lynda. “Description and Prescription in Dictionaries.” In The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography. Edited by Philip Durkin, 546–560. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

    This chapter problematizes neatly linear readings of the prescriptive/description transition in Victorian work, examining instead the variety of linguistic and cultural frames that intervened with reference to a range of primary works.

  • Murray, James A. H. The Evolution of English Lexicography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900.

    Originally delivered as the Romanes Lecture in Oxford in 1900, this represents an important firsthand interpretation of Victorian dictionary making as a discipline while offering valuable insights into Victorian thinking on lexicographical praxis in the past and present.

  • Ogilvie, Sarah, and Gabriella Safran, eds. The Whole World in a Book: Dictionaries in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

    A thought-provoking collection that traces the diversity of work and approaches within 19th-century lexicography as a worldwide phenomenon.

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