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The history of the Oxford English Dictionary (continued)



The First Edition 1857 - 1928


The death of Coleridge at the age of 31 deprived the Dictionary, almost at the outset,
of an editor of great promise. In addition to the activities already mentioned, he had
compiled and published a Glossarial Index to the printed literature of the thirteenth
century, rightly estimating the value of this as a basis for the early history of the
language. He had also faced the problem of editing, and ?had prepared a few of the A
words for printing, so far as the material sent in to him allowed?; this had been
carried as far as the printing of a specimen page containing affect-affection. If this
was premature, as it proved to be, it was because the magnitude of the work had not yet
become apparent. Clear evidence of this is furnished by the set of specially made
pigeon-holes which he considered would be large enough to contain the materials required
at the outset. These provide about 260 inches of linear space, which would take no more
than about 85,000 ?slips?. As many as this were ultimately required for even one of the
minor letters of the alphabet. Specimens of the articles prepared by Coleridge were
printed in 1862, at the end of Part III of the ?Basis of Comparison?, and extracts from
others were read at a meeting of the Society on 24 April of the same year.

With Coleridge's death, the editorship passed to Furnivall, then in his thirty-sixth
year. He immediately took up the duties, and on 23 May ?made a statement as to the
present condition of the collections for the Society's Dictionary, and the course he
proposed to pursue with regard to the scheme?. The lines of that course are clearly
indicated in the ?Preliminary Notice? mentioned above. He was convinced that the time
for editing was still at a distance. ?I have determined to put aside all idea of
printing the first part of the Dictionary for four or five years unless some great
unexpected help is forthcoming; and I propose, if all go well, to finish this
Third-Period Basis early next year; then to compile Two Concise Dictionaries of Early
and Middle English, which shall include severally all the materials sent in for the
First and Second Periods.?

The magnitude of the task was thus becoming clearer, but in some points its extent was
still underrated. ?Meantime,? Furnivall wrote, ?the etymological material will, I trust,
be ready.? This was to be done by Dr Carl Lottner on the basis of Worcester's
Dictionary, with the precaution that ?his work will be submitted to the Etymological
Committee, perhaps before it is printed?. It had not yet become obvious that in many
instances only the accumulation of material for the particular word could enable the
editor to suggest or establish real origin.

Another of Furnivall's first tasks was the compilation of a ?List of Books already read,
or now (12 July 1861) being read for the Philological Society's New English Dictionary?,
covering 24 pages and published as an appendix to the Transactions for 1860-1. The
numbers given here are: First Period, 143 Works and Authors; Second Period, 486; Third
Period, 81. Among the principal readers a Furnivall and Coleridge, Revd. J. Eastwood, H.
H. Gibbs, E. S. Jackson, Revd. Dr Stocker. W. C. Hazlitt, Mr Sprange, etc. The last page
contains an intimation ?that the reading of any books not named in the foregoing List
will be of service to the Dictionary. A list of those specially recommended to the
notice of contributors is in preparation.?

Meanwhile, the Third Part of the ?Basis of Comparison?, containing the letters M to Z,
was on the way, and was issued in the third week of March 1862. Shortly before its
appearance, on 27 February, Furnivall proposed the following resolutions, which were
accepted by the Society.

1. That a concise Dictionary be prepared as a preliminary to the Society's proposed
   new English Dictionary and as a new basis of comparison for all the other periods.
2. That the concise Dictionary shall be as far as possible an abstract of what the
   large Dictionary should be, and shall contain - the Pronunciation, Critical marks,
   Etymologies, Roots, Prefixes, Suffixes, Definitions, and Homonyms of the words
   registered in it, with short quotations (a few words long) and the date and name of
   the Author for all words for which passages have been sent in to the Editor, and that
   all words, senses of words, idioms &c. known to exist, but for which authority has
   not yet been sent to the Editor, be supplied from any other available source and be
   marked with a * or other sign to denote the want of an authority.
3. That the Editor be authorised to entrust the quotations in his possession, and the
   sub-editing of any parts of the concise Dictionary to such of the contributors to the
   Dictionary or other Volunteers as he shall think fit.

It was also resolved:

That Mr. Furnivall be authorised to announce his plan to the contributors in the next
part of the Third Period basis to sort the contributions and entrust them to the care of
such sub-editors as he thinks fit, and that he be requested to print off at the expense
of the Society a specimen of the concise dictionary which he proposes, and to lay it
before the Society for their final decision before proceeding further with the printing
of such dictionary.

In accordance with this the Third Part of the ?Basis? announced that ?the next step to
be taken is to get out the Concise Dictionary hinted at in Part II?. Even this, it was
clear, would take time, and ?nothing but the continuous labour of many years can make
our Book anything like complete. - Let us then persevere.?

The idea of compiling a concise dictionary as a preliminary to the greater task was
adopted by Furnivall on practical grounds; the agreement made with Trübner in 1858 had
lapsed in course of time, and he saw no chance of finding another publisher for the
larger work. In the expectation that the smaller task could be accomplished in a few
years, he even entered into a personal contract with John Murray to have the manuscript
ready for the press by the end of 1865. This view of the situation was natural while the
material was still comparatively limited in amount. It became more and more unpractical
as this continued to accumulate, for it involved the handling and arranging of all the
slips for each word before the ?concise? article could be written, and consequently
would have taken almost as much time as the preparation of the work on a more ample
scale. This must, in time, have become obvious to the few volunteers who actually
prepared portions of the Concise Dictionary, and it is not surprising that in the end
the idea had to be given up, at considerable pecuniary loss to its originator. Apart
from this, the employment of sub-editors was an idea which proved of great value for the
later progress of the Dictionary, and to Dr Furnivall belongs the credit of originating
the scheme and of issuing instructions for the guidance of these helpers in printed
form, on 15 September 1862. Within the next year or two several of them prepared lists
of the words coming under the letters which they had undertaken to sub-edit, and these
were printed separately when ready, beginning in 1863 with that for B, ?compiled by W.
Gee, Esq., sub-editor of the B words for the Concise Dictionary?. This contained no less
than 93 pages in triple columns, giving the date of the earliest example of each word in
the material, and the latest date for obsolete words, while each word is provided with
numbers to indicate the periods (1, 2, and 3) for which there were quotations. Similar
lists for N and U-V were issued in 1865. The latter contains a prefatory notice by
Furnivall on the progress made in sub-editing, and lists of ?books now in hand for
cutting up?. These words indicate a method of collecting material extensively employed
from this time onward, by which the reader for the Dictionary was saved much time and
labour by being freed from copying the quotations, while the Editor had the advantages
of the original print and a fuller context. The defects of the method were that two
copies of each book were required to give the full text, and that many early printed
works were dealt with in this way which would have been of greater value in the hands of
the editors.

From 1862 to 1872 the progress of the Dictionary in Furnivall's hands can be clearly
traced in the annual circulars which he sent out to the members of the Philological
Society. Portions of these are quoted in the ?Appeal to the English-Speaking Public on
behalf of a New English Dictionary?, issued by the Revd G. Wheelwright in 1875. A study
of them shows considerable activity on the part of readers and sub-editors for the first
three or four years, followed by a gradual slackening off, partly due to Furnivall's own
increasing absorption in other interests. That for 1872 admitted that ?the progress in
the Dictionary work has been so slight that no fresh report in detail is needed?.

These circulars were not included in the printed Transactions of the Philological
Society, and in the pages of these there is remarkably little mention of the Dictionary
during this period. On 6 November 1868, ?the Hon. Secretary [i.e. Furnivall] made a
statement as to the progress of the Society's proposed new English Dictionary, together
with a calculation by the Rev. G. Wheelwright, showing that about one-third of the work
had been sub-edited?. A still briefer mention occurs under the date of 21 May 1869, and
after this the subject does not recur until, in the annual presidential address by
Alexander J. Ellis on 15 May 1874, it is included in a survey of the Society's work:

One of our works, for which great collections have been already made, remains, and may
for some time remain, merely one of the things we have tried to do, - of course I allude
to our projected dictionary. Several things, indeed, make me inclined to think that a
Society is less fitted to compile a dictionary than to get the materials collected.

In the words that follow on this, Ellis clearly indicates that in his opinion the
scholar best qualified to edit the Dictionary was Henry Sweet. The Revd Mr Wheelwright's
?Appeal? of the following year is in a more hopeful tone, and indicated the richness of
the Dictionary material by giving a specimen of the letter F, which he had sub-edited;
this extends to eight pages in triple columns and contains the words from fa to face.

During these years, Furnivall had of course not been idle. Not only had he continued to
direct the collecting and sub-editing, but he had immensely increased the possibilities
of the Dictionary by the foundation of the Early English Text Society in 1864, and the
Chaucer Society in 1868. Without the former of these, the collecting of sufficient
Middle English material would have presented almost insuperable difficulties, and in
consequence the historical basis for many words would have been defective or altogether
lacking. Although he took no part in the actual editing of the Dictionary in its
ultimate form, he never ceased to contribute liberally to its stores, both from the
publications of these societies and from other sources, including his daily morning and
evening paper. If the Dictionary at one period quotes the Daily News and at another the
Daily Chronicle, it is because Furnivall had changed his paper in the meanwhile. Through
his early organization of the collecting and sub-editing, and his lifelong
contributions, the work of Furnivall pervades every page of the Dictionary, and has
helped in a great degree to make it what it is. He was fortunate in living long enough
to see assured the completion of the work to which he had given so much of his busy
life. Almost down to the time of his death in 1910 he still gave evidence of the
unremitting activity, and interest in English studies, which had enabled him to achieve
so much, while his genial disposition and constant readiness for new friendships
explained his success in enlisting the help of others.

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