A Dictionary of the English Language

Johnson’s Dictionary is one of the most distinctive monuments of English literature and lexicography: no dictionary so vast is so thoroughly marked with the personality of its compiler. What required an academy in other nations was achieved in eighteenth-century England by a single self-styled "harmless drudge" in merely nine years. Johnson was the first to provide the comprehensive guidance we now take for granted in a dictionary. His abundant quotations illustrating usage and spelling form an anthology of the finest passages of English verse and prose, and reflect the taste and judgment of the leading essayist and critic of his age. This Octavo Edition, which marks the 250th anniversary of the work’s publication, features searchable defined words (some 45,000) as well as Johnson’s 1747 The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language.

Commentary by Eric Korn, 3-CD set.