Johnson's Dictionary

"...Samuel Johnson, wholly unknown to the public, because all his work had been published anonymously, set out in 1746 to produce such a dictionary, and did. When it appeared in 1755, in two large folio volumes, each the size of a lectern Bible, it swept the field, and maintained its position in England for nearly a century. It is the most famous English dictionary before Webster, and perhaps the best before the eleven-volume Oxford English Dictionary. But, except for some quotations in Bartlett and Boswell's Johnson, it is unread and unknown, for a simple reason: it has been out of print for about a hundred years. A modern reprint of the whole Dictionary might fill ten large volumes, and would be both impressive and unread. We have therefore decided to make a selection, the nature of which has been determined by the basic character of Johnson's Dictionary..." -- Introduction.