Dear Samuel Johnson,
Dear Samuel Johnson,
This evening I noticed that your dictionary was not yet available anywhere online. It's been in public domain for two centuries now, so I just figured folks had forgotten about you. I got it in my head that I would do it, I would put your work on the internet. 'What was it, like, 1200 definitions long?' I asked myself as I climbed the stairs to the fourth floor of the library. I searched the shelves expecting to find a wispy little paperback of maybe 200 pages, but I found something else.
I can only guess your dictionary is not yet online because it is 2 volumes, 2700 pages in total, and contains 42773 words with 114000 literary citations. Working alone, it took you nine years during which the group of booksellers who contracted you didn't even pay you enough to support yourself. But in that time you single-handedly completed a work so sweeping that people today cringe at the task of type-setting it. For over 150 years your book had the last word on meaning, and said it with flair. It took the OED, compiled by a mob of hundreds over the course of 68 years, to knock you off the shelves.
I did some more concentrated searching and found that the University of Birmingham has been trying to put your book online since 2000. One person from Project Gutenberg has been working on the text of your book since November 2003. I give him or her another two years, at least. As for me, I hope you'll forgive me if I wait for them to finish. It's just so much work.
Sincerely,
AP Saulters
This evening I noticed that your dictionary was not yet available anywhere online. It's been in public domain for two centuries now, so I just figured folks had forgotten about you. I got it in my head that I would do it, I would put your work on the internet. 'What was it, like, 1200 definitions long?' I asked myself as I climbed the stairs to the fourth floor of the library. I searched the shelves expecting to find a wispy little paperback of maybe 200 pages, but I found something else.
I can only guess your dictionary is not yet online because it is 2 volumes, 2700 pages in total, and contains 42773 words with 114000 literary citations. Working alone, it took you nine years during which the group of booksellers who contracted you didn't even pay you enough to support yourself. But in that time you single-handedly completed a work so sweeping that people today cringe at the task of type-setting it. For over 150 years your book had the last word on meaning, and said it with flair. It took the OED, compiled by a mob of hundreds over the course of 68 years, to knock you off the shelves.
I did some more concentrated searching and found that the University of Birmingham has been trying to put your book online since 2000. One person from Project Gutenberg has been working on the text of your book since November 2003. I give him or her another two years, at least. As for me, I hope you'll forgive me if I wait for them to finish. It's just so much work.
Sincerely,
AP Saulters