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2 volumes. Titles printed in red and black. Woodcut tail-pieces. Text in two columns. (folio) 40.5x25 cm. (16x10"), period calf. First Edition.

First edition of Johnson's Dictionary, possibly the most important book in the history of English. "Dr Johnson performed with his Dictionary the most amazing, enduring and endearing one-man feat in the field of lexicography…It is the dictionary itself which justifies Noah Webster’s statement that ‘Johnson’s writings had, in philology, the effect which Newton’s discoveries had in mathematics’. Johnson introduced into English lexicography principles which had already been accepted in Europe but were quite novel in mid-eighteenth-century England. He codified the spelling of English words; he gave full and lucid definitions of their meanings (often entertainingly coloured by his High Church and Tory propensities); and he adduced extensive and apt illustrations from a wide range of authoritative writers...but despite the progress made during the past two centuries in historical and comparative philology, Johnson’s book may still be consulted for instruction as well as pleasure" (Printing and the Mind of Man). Indeed, the labor and genius of Johnson's production still awes us today. Over a period of eight years, "with no real library at hand, Johnson wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words...illustrating the senses in which these words could be used by including about 114,000 quotations drawn from English writing in every field of learning during the two centuries from the middle of the Elizabethan period down to his own time" (W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson, NY 1977, p.247). The first edition was published in April 1755 in a printing of 2000 copies. PMM 201; Rothschild 1237. Formerly in the Durrett Collection at the University of Chicago Libraries, with bookplate (withdrawn stamped), perforated stamps to title-pages, a few other margins.