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Defining the World
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About the Author

Henry Hitchings was born in 1974. Educated at the universities of Oxford and London, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Samuel Johnson. Defining the World is his first book. He lives in London and contributes to a wide range of newspapers and periodicals.

Reviews

"Inventive and entertaining." --The New York Times Book Review "Hitchings's evident enthrallment with all things Johnsonian is contagious." --The Roanoke Times "[A] marvelous account of the making of the dictionary. . . . Defining the World is one of the most enjoyable books I've read this year. Hitchings is a buoyant, zestful writer. . . . Also delightful is how Hitchings evokes the presence and temperament, by turns neurotic and assured, crotchety and inquisitive, of the 'book-muncher, the pagemaker, and the cultural steeplejack' who pulled off a remarkable intellectual feat." --The Boston Globe "Like a good dictionary, Hitchings's work itself is chockablock with enough tidbits and trivia to delight even the looniest of logophiles." --The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) "Quite simply, one can never get too much Samuel Johnson." --The Washington Post "A well-written, intelligently organized, and thoroughly readable book . . . It is obvious that Hitchings loves to read Johnson's dictionary. . . . The great thing about Defining the World is that it makes us want to read it too." --Los Angeles Times "Hitchings manages to make the story of a dictionary not only interesting but positively compelling." --The Examiner (Washington, D.C.) "Hitchings's affectionate tribute accomplishes a worthy task of allowing us to admire anew Johnson's life and great work." --The Commercial Dispatch (Mississippi) "A spirited, learned account . . . Hitchings does a masterful job of describing Johnson's approach. . . . A first-rate synthesis of one of literary history's most astonishing endeavors." --Kirkus Reviews "This book is the riveting account of how Dr Johnson, an eighteenth-century man, blind in one eye, terrified of death and convinced he was lazy, compiled what is considered to be the definitive dictionary of the English language. Hitchings brings Johnson's humanity and the massive task he undertook to touchable life." --Beryl Bainbridge, The Guardian "Hitchings's sprightly book about the dictionary gives a full picture of Johnson during a difficult decade of melancholy toil." --The New Yorker "Hitchings skillfully re-creates Johnson's beloved London, a gin-soaked city of commercial ambition, petty jealousies and danger lurking down dark alleyways." --San Francisco Chronicle

For the 250th anniversary of Dr. Samuel Johnson's most famous achievement, Hitchings's charming philology-as-biography shows Johnson to be no mere compiler of words but, as he himself put it, "a writer of dictionaries." Authoritative dictionaries for French and Italian were compiled by official academies, but English's first proper dictionary fell to a university dropout and failed provincial schoolmaster turned Grub Street hack-long before he became the Great Cham. The work began as a purely commercial venture at the suggestion of a bookseller-publisher, Johnson labored under less than ideal conditions, assisted only by a group of eclectic and eccentric amanuenses, and burdened by his wife's declining health and his own melancholia. In the end, his four-volume, 20-pound opus defined more than 42,773 common words and technical terms from all disciplines, supported with some 110,000 quotations drawn from English literature. Besides contemporary illustrations by the great Hogarth and Reynolds, Hitchings's book reproduces sample pages of Johnson's annotated reference material and the first edition of the dictionary. Though not as sensational as the bestselling account of another dictionary, The Professor and the Madam, British writer Hitchings's debut puts the scholarly labor in illuminating perspective along with its entirely human creator. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

"Inventive and entertaining." --The New York Times Book Review "Hitchings's evident enthrallment with all things Johnsonian is contagious." --The Roanoke Times "[A] marvelous account of the making of the dictionary. . . . Defining the World is one of the most enjoyable books I've read this year. Hitchings is a buoyant, zestful writer. . . . Also delightful is how Hitchings evokes the presence and temperament, by turns neurotic and assured, crotchety and inquisitive, of the 'book-muncher, the pagemaker, and the cultural steeplejack' who pulled off a remarkable intellectual feat." --The Boston Globe "Like a good dictionary, Hitchings's work itself is chockablock with enough tidbits and trivia to delight even the looniest of logophiles." --The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) "Quite simply, one can never get too much Samuel Johnson." --The Washington Post "A well-written, intelligently organized, and thoroughly readable book . . . It is obvious that Hitchings loves to read Johnson's dictionary. . . . The great thing about Defining the World is that it makes us want to read it too." --Los Angeles Times "Hitchings manages to make the story of a dictionary not only interesting but positively compelling." --The Examiner (Washington, D.C.) "Hitchings's affectionate tribute accomplishes a worthy task of allowing us to admire anew Johnson's life and great work." --The Commercial Dispatch (Mississippi) "A spirited, learned account . . . Hitchings does a masterful job of describing Johnson's approach. . . . A first-rate synthesis of one of literary history's most astonishing endeavors." --Kirkus Reviews "This book is the riveting account of how Dr Johnson, an eighteenth-century man, blind in one eye, terrified of death and convinced he was lazy, compiled what is considered to be the definitive dictionary of the English language. Hitchings brings Johnson's humanity and the massive task he undertook to touchable life." --Beryl Bainbridge, The Guardian "Hitchings's sprightly book about the dictionary gives a full picture of Johnson during a difficult decade of melancholy toil." --The New Yorker "Hitchings skillfully re-creates Johnson's beloved London, a gin-soaked city of commercial ambition, petty jealousies and danger lurking down dark alleyways." --San Francisco Chronicle

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