Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words

Professor Lynda Mugglestone (Fellow in English) has published a new book exploring the work of Samuel Johnson.

Popular readings of Johnson as a dictionary-maker often see him as a writer who both laments and attempts to control the state of the language. Professor Mugglestone's book looks at the range of Johnson's writings on, and the complexity of his thinking about, language and lexicography. She shows how these reveal him probing problems not just of meaning and use but what he considered the related issues of control, obedience, and justice, as well as the difficulties of power when exerted over the 'sea of words'.

Mugglestone examines Johnson's attitudes to language change, loan words, spelling, history, and authority, describing, too, the evolution of his ideas about the nature, purpose, and methods of lexicography, and shows how these reflect his own and others' thinking about politics, culture, and society. The book offers a careful reassessment of Johnson's prescriptive practice, examining in detail his commitment to evidence, and the uses to which this might be put.

In his review, published in the Times Higher Education magazine, Willy Maley, Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Glasgow, observes that "Dictionaries are never neutral. Journeys into words always come with political baggage, boundaries and bias. That’s why it helps to go below deck and see the workings, and that’s what makes this journey round Johnson so richly rewarding. Mugglestone’s scholarship displays deep learning with a deceptive lightness, a talent she shares with her subject."