Talk:Robert Hunter (encyclopædist)

Photo request

This article would benefit from a photograph of Hunter's house in Essex, complete with blue plaque, if anyone would like to take one and put it on Commons. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:06, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

First multi-volume dictionary of English

This seems so obviously untrue, that I wonder if I am misunderstanding. For one thing, it is an encyclopedic dictionary, not the more typical purely lexical dictionary.

The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language: A Complete Encyclopedic Lexicon, Literary, Scientific, and Technological, edited by Rev. John Ogilvie (1797–1867), was published by W. G. Blackie and Co. of Scotland, 1847–1850 in two large volumes. There was a third supplement volume in 1855. A revised and expanded edition by Charles Annandale was published in 1882 in four volumes.

In 1828, at the age of 70, Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language (ADEL) in two quarto volumes. In 1841, 82-year-old Noah Webster published a revised and expanded edition of his lexicographical masterpiece in two volumes, a 2nd Edition, Corrected and Enlarged of the American Dictionary of the English Language.

Johnson's Dictionary was finally published in April 1755 in 2 volumes.

Bailey's An Universal Etymological English Dictionary, from its publication in 1721, became the most popular English dictionary of the 18th century, and went through nearly thirty editions. A supplementary volume of his dictionary appeared in 1727.

So at a minimum, Hunter's dictionary was the 8th multi-volume dictionary of English, assuming it is even fair to compare and encyclopedic dictionary to a lexical one.

All info is from other Wikipedia articles.

Gbambo (talk) 09:13, 13 January 2015 (UTC)