
Philology in Turbulent Times: Joseph Bosworth, His Dictionary, and the Recovery of Old English
Publications of the Dictionary of Old English 10 • xxx, 314 pp. • ISBN 978-0-88844-910-8 • Cloth • $95.00
From its inception in 1838, Joseph Bosworth’s A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language was widely viewed as flawed. The denigration proved widespread by the time T. Northcote Toller revised it in 1898. Critics, however, knew very little about the creation of the Dictionary or the struggles of its creators. This book is a project of recovery: it situates the Dictionary culturally and historically, reconstructing that history from a wealth of archival materials – surviving manuscripts, correspondence, annotated books, and other documents.