Historical Dictionaries in Their Paratextual Context ed. by Roderick McConchie and Jukka Tyrkkö

Abstract

Reviewed by: Historical Dictionaries in Their Paratextual Context ed. by Roderick McConchie and Jukka Tyrkkö Lisa Berglund (bio) Historical Dictionaries in Their Paratextual Context edited by Roderick McConchie and Jukka Tyrkkö. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018. Pp.xii + 318. $114.99. ISBN: 978-3-11-057286-5. Paratexts—a term coined by Gérard Genette to describe the "undefined zone" that surrounds the principal text of a book—include title pages, dedications, illustrations, notes, bindings, marginalia, and a legion of other materials, original or adscititious, drafted by authors, imposed by printers, or added by readers. To date, most scholarship on the paratexts of dictionaries has focused on illustrations, notably the work of Michael Hancher and Thora van Male. In addition, Lindsay Rose Russell has analyzed the dedications to women in early modern dictionaries, and there have been studies of dictionary marginalia by well-known writers. Historical Dictionaries in their Paratextual Context is therefore a welcome contribution to this growing field of study. Ten of its essays examine monolingual and bilingual English dictionaries published between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, while two address the Oxford English Dictionary. In their introduction, editors Roderick McConchie and Jukka Tyrkkö "postulate an anthropotext of books—the human cultural context by which they are surrounded, embedded in and impacted by, and [which] might include readers, collectors, and annotators." (vii) (Couldn't "users" be added to this list, in deference to the peculiar ways in which dictionaries and human beings interact?) Some contributors to this volume employ the editors' extended concept of the paratext, exploring the human scene in which dictionaries find themselves rather than focusing specifically on the printed or annotated page. Frederic T. Dolezal and Ward J. Risvold, for example, conduct a close reading of title pages combined with biographical research into the lives of nine booksellers and printers, and conclude that "the preponderance of evidence points to Anne Maxwell as the most likely printer" of John Wilkins's 1668 Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (53). In her essay "Subscribers and Patrons: Jacob Serenius and His Dictionarium Anglo-Svethico-Latinum 1734," Seija Tiisala uses the subscriber list for this dictionary to explore the social networks of among Nordic and English readers. The diverse supporters of this trilingual lexicon, she concludes, hailed from the worlds of commerce, diplomacy, the arts, and the church, as well as including scholars and [End Page 286] collectors. Her descriptive essay throws new light on cosmopolitan aspects of eighteenth-century British society, particularly regarding Nordic affiliations. Another contribution that reveals unexpected connections between English lexicography and a wider European readership is "Printed English Dictionaries in the National Library of Russia to the Mid-Seventeenth Century," by Olga E. Frolova and Roderick McConchie. Admittedly a preliminary study, this essay asks thoughtful questions about how national libraries (and their lexicographical holdings) are assembled and what the National Library of Russia's dictionaries may suggest about early modern international enthusiasms for particular books, such as John Florio's Florio His Firste Fruites (1578). Of the essays that examine paratexts more directly, especially engaging is Giovanni Iamartino's "'A Hundred Visions and Revisions': Malone's Annotations to Johnson's Dictionary." Iamartino begins by neatly observing of responses to Johnson's monumental work that whereas most praise was vague and perfunctory, usually and simply complimenting Johnson on his marvelous achievement, unfavorable critics often led frontal attacks, magnifying the work's defects and focussing on specific weaknesses. (115–16) (A university professor myself, I am chastened by this diagnosis and have resolved to be more cautious in my allotment of vague praise and precise blame when commenting on student essays.) Iamartino then focuses on the general praise and concrete criticism embedded in Edmond Malone's nearly 3,000 annotations to his copy of the three-volume Dublin quarto edition of the Dictionary. Malone's goal, he argues, was "to counter the steady corruption of the Dictionary by greedy booksellers since Johnson's death" (118). Iamartino is preparing a full edition of Malone's annotations, and this essay "focuses on the 529 annotations which cover the A-E section of the Dictionary" (120). The annotations include new words and significations, new illustrative quotations, and...