Dr.Johnson's Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book That Defined the World

I did find the book entertaining but the author made some outrageous comments - declared as fact, which he later contradicted. For example the author states: "He made a bad marriage, to a woman twenty years his senior;..." (p.5) however on (p27) he writes: "Johnson consistently maintained that 'it was a love marriage upon both sides'. We have no concrete reason to doubt him,..." He also writes: "On 15 April 1755 the first great dictionary of English was published." (p.1) however on (p.48) he writes "We should be clear that there were English dictionaries before Johnson."
These are a few faults which the book itself highlights, but anybody with a knowledge of Johnson will be aware of many more false statements. I may be overly pedantic, but this lack of consistency either shows sloppy thinking are else an urge to deceive - perhaps for the purpose of entertaining. Overall an interesting book, on an interesting subject, but inconsistent which detracts from its overall worth.

It was not quite as good as I thought it would be.. slightly dull and disappointing. I don't about Dr. Hitchings but I feel he needs to sort out his writing styles.

This book gets off to rather a slow start. The first 45 pages - about a sixth of the book - tell us of Johnson's life before he started work on the Dictionary. True, it links some of the events of Johnson's life to definitions he will give in his Dictionary; but such links are relatively few: the biographical element and the not unfamiliar social history of 18th century London predominate. That is pleasant enough, but one is impatient for the story of the Dictionary to begin. But when it does start, the book becomes really interesting and indeed fascinating.

Initially Johnson hoped to `stabilise' the English language, to exclude `low terms' from it, and, through many of the elevating passages he chose to illustrate the use of a word, to promote education, religion or morality. Later, however, he felt the responsibility to record how English was actually being used in his time - that being the view which predominates among modern lexicographers. If he has to include words of which he really disapproves, he notes that they are `cant'. But he happily included some robust slang expressions of his time and certain vigorous words of abuse. He was suitably idiosyncratic in deciding which words are cant (bamboozle, nervous, the drink stout, flirtation), which are `low' (ignoramus, simpleton) and which are not. He also had a great dislike for words recently imported from France, though he includes them: bourgeois, unique, champagne, cutlet, trait, ruse, finesse. He would of course have known what a huge range of French words came into the English language with the Norman Conquest; but for him any word, of whatever origin, that had been used by the Elizabethans, had a respectable pedigree.

Johnson's methodology is interesting. He began with underlining a word in passages from his vast reading; that word would then be written on a slip of paper, together with the passage or passages in which it had figured; and the slips were then arranged in alphabetical order. Hitchings writes that `fundamentally Johnson was less interested in language than in its use by writers'. Johnson noted the etymological origin of words, but was more interested in how they had then developed therefrom through usage. He quoted lavishly from the Bible (4,617 times) and from some 500 authors, ranging from the famous to some who are today almost completely unknown - but refused to quote from writers such as Hobbes or Bolingbroke whom he thought too wicked. His quotations give one an insight into his own tastes and that of his contemporaries. As a result the Dictionary becomes what Hitchings calls `a giant commonplace book'.

In chapters on Johnson's melancholia and introspection we are give quotations which are reflections on such experiences. Others were chosen to illustrate the frustrations of marriage - Johnson's own marriage having been a very difficult one.

In the course of the book Hitchings quotes nearly 500 of the Dictionary's 42,733 definitions. Some of these are exceedingly polysyllabic and Latinate, rightly characterized by Hitchings as a `sesquipedalian avalanche'; in others, like his references to Scots, to Whigs or to Catholicism and Presbyterianism, he avowedly and robustly airs his prejudices, as he does in his laudatory quotation following the word `royalist'. He regards suicide as `a horrid crime'; he shows his contempt for foxhunters; his prejudice against alcohol is given expression in his definition of distillers. And there are many words now, alas, lost and not to be found in my Collins Dictionary (though they are in the great Oxford English Dictionary). Hitchings provides a feast of them throughout the book; here are just a few: abbey-lubber, giglet, extispicious, pickthank and pricklouse, jobbernowl and dandyprat, fopdoodle and witworm. Johnson also listed the delightful-sounding trolmydames because he had found it in Shakespeare, but confessed that `of this word I know not the meaning'. (The OED does not list it; but Webster's 1913 Dictionary does know it: the source seems to be a trou-madame, meaning a pigeonhole, and trolmydame is the name of `the game of nineholes'.)

Hitchings draws out very well how the Dictionary entries relate to the customs and fashions of his time, to its science and its entertainments.

The last forty pages of the book mainly tell the later history of the Dictionary and of its later editions. Although the Dictionary did have some violent critics, it quickly became a classic. In 1773 a fourth edition appeared, with significant changes made by Johnson himself. The Dictionary's definitions even figured in 20th century legal cases about the American Constitution, with lawyers claiming that the 1787 wording of the Constitution would have carried the meanings ascribed to them by the then standard authority of the Dictionary.

Although the 42,733 definitions in the first edition were but a small part of the 250,000 to 300,000 words in the English language at that time, Johnson's achievement was immense. He was after all the sole compiler of the Dictionary, compared with the 40 members of the French Academy who had toiled for 55 years to produce theirs. Johnson had hoped to complete the work in three years. In the end it took him nine, from 1746 to the first edition in 1755. And he had laboured without much help from the Earl of Chesterfield, to whom Johnson had submitted the original plan in hope of the Earl's patronage. By the time the Dictionary was about to be published, Johnson had made a name for himself with other writings, and the Earl now belatedly posed as Johnson's patron. Hitchings tells well the story of that famous put-down of the Earl by Johnson which was also a watershed in the history of patronage.

One feels like cheering. I have always had a liking for Johnson's quirky and forthright character. The Dictionary shares these qualities, and what I have learnt from this admirable, charming and scholarly book has further reinforced my affection for him.

I've read a couple of books about dictionaries (including the highly forgettable "Surgeon of Crowthorne") but I'd never found an accessible book about Johnson's dictionary.

This book is well researched (in fact, it seems to be either a diluted version of Hitching's doctoral thesis or an extention of it) and is reasonably entertaining. It concentrates on the dictionary more than the man and, although it starts like an autobiography of Johnson, it branches away until it becomes the story of the dictionary and its impact on the world.

There are a few niggling points. Hitchings (note, Hitchings - not Johnson!) is difficult to read because of the language he uses. His prose is littered with huge, latinate words when short, more recognisable ones would do. He goes a bit overboard with adjectives which, again, test the patience of the reader. If his intention was to have you reaching for the dictionary every few pages then it worked.

The book really doesn't know what it wants to be. It refers to Blackadder and other examples of pop culture but, at the same time, speaks like an eighty year old Professor of English. Where there are strokes of genius in this work, they come from Johnson. By staying close to the dictionary and its definitions, this book manages to rise above its pretentious author and make the reader smile. Johnson's dictionary is a source of many great lines, wry and poetic by turns (see entries for "thumb" and "oats").

This book is good but, as a general reader, I found it disappointing that the author could not come out of "English teacher mode" to make this book more accessible to the layman.

Dr Johnson is a quotable figure, but he's not so well known for what he actually wrote, and in this readable book Hitchings tries to redress the balance. It's an interestingly organised study of Johnson's dictionary, Johnson the man and the eighteenth century, but it will perhaps be best received by people who are intrigued by language and have enjoyed books like David Crystal's Stories of English or the more recent Balderdash and Piffle. There are some good anecdotes here, as well as lots of fluent analysis. It's probably less arcane than it sounds, and Hitchings writes with style and a human touch. Recommended.