Some Account of the Oxford University Press, 1468-1921 · Oxford University Press
OXFORD BOOKS
The scope of the Dictionary, in the form which it finally assumed, is thus stated in the preface to Volume I:—‘The aim of this dictionary is to furnish an adequate account of the meaning, origin, and history of English words now in general use, or known to have been in use at any time during the last seven hundred years. It endeavours (1) to show, with regard to each individual word, when, how, in what shape, and with what signification, it became English; what development of form and meaning it has since received; which of its uses have, in the course of time, become obsolete, and which still survive; what new uses have since arisen, by what processes, and when: (2) to illustrate these facts by a series of quotations ranging from the first known occurrence of the word to the latest, or down to the present day; the word being thus made to exhibit its own history and meaning: and (3) to treat the etymology of each word strictly on the basis of historical fact, and in accordance with the methods and results of modern philological science.’ As the history of many English words begins with the Anglo-Saxon period, and the ‘first known occurrence’ may be as early as the seventh century, the period actually covered by hundreds of the articles in the Dictionary is one of ten, eleven, or twelve centuries.
The extent to which the aim of the Dictionary has been accomplished is not yet so widely known as it ought to be. Many discussions as to the origin, history, and meaning of words are carried on in newspapers and periodicals which could be decided at once by a reference to the Dictionary. Inquirers spend much of their own and others’ time, and in the end write to one of the editors, in quest of information which has for years been available in the published volumes. Nor is it solely the student of language who can profit by the use of the Dictionary, although in this respect it is of unique value both for English and Continental philologists. Every scholar and scientist is likely to find in it some fresh light upon his own subject, for many special points in the history and terminology of the various sciences have for the first time been elucidated in its pages. The reputation, however, of the Dictionary is now so widely spread that it would be superfluous to call witnesses to its unique qualities and its profound usefulness. In the legislature and in the law courts, as well as in the library and the market place, its ruling on the meanings and use of words is accepted as final. Nor is the range of the work limited in this respect to the usage of the United Kingdom; it embraces all forms of the language sanctioned as standard by literary use, wherever English is spoken and written.
For these and other reasons no proper comparison can be made with any other English dictionary; but the magnitude of the result may none the less be gauged by means of these. Taking one of the ten volumes as a basis of comparison, the seventh, comprising words beginning with O and P, has nearly 49,000 words (of which over 5,000 are obsolete and nearly 2,000 are naturalized aliens). No other English dictionary has more than 27,000 words beginning with O and P. When comparison is made of the number of illustrative quotations, the difference is overwhelming; Vol. VII has 175,000 quotations, and no other dictionary has much more than 20,000 for the same sections of the alphabet. If it is thought that, great as the work is, it has taken an inordinate time to produce, comfort may be taken from the fate of comparable enterprises abroad. The great _Deutsches Wörterbuch_ started by the brothers Grimm in 1838 began to be printed as long ago as 1851, and thus had a start of over thirty years; but though it is only some two-thirds of the scale of the Oxford book, there still after sixty-seven years remains about a sixth to do. The Dutch _Woordenboek_ is less advanced, and the dictionary of the Swedish Academy has not passed the letter D.
The state of the work to-day is that of the ten volumes nine are published, and of the tenth (Ti-Z) substantial parts are complete, namely Ti-Ty, and V, X Y Z, and the first sections of U and W. The end, however, is not so near as might be thought; U is a large section, and W is in many respects the most difficult letter in the alphabet, consisting as it does almost entirely of words of Teutonic origin, and therefore of obscure etymology and complicated history. A lexicographer makes light work of _parallelepiped_ and _supralapsarian_; it is when he comes to words like _wealth_ and _work_, _war_ and _waste_, _wild_ and _wilful_, that his powers of discovery and of discrimination are seriously taxed. Sir James Murray (he was knighted in 1908) died 26 July 1915. His ambition to see the completion of the work on his eightieth birthday in 1917 was not fulfilled, and even if he had lived to devote to it his amazing powers of application, could not have been fulfilled. He lived, however, to see the end of his life-work in sight, and more than that of any other man his name will be associated with the long and efficient working of the great engine of research. The volumes produced by him have characteristic excellences which cannot be exactly matched, though they may be rivalled by merits of another kind.
The work is now carried on by three editors, working independently on different sections of the alphabet. Dr. Henry Bradley, whose period of work on the Dictionary now rivals Murray’s in point of time, is by common consent the greatest of living English philologists. He has been an editor since 1888. Professor W. A. Craigie, who has been an editor since 1901, and Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon since 1916, brings to the work of the Dictionary a rare combination of qualifications. He is especially eminent as a Scandinavian scholar. Mr. C. T. Onions, appointed an editor in 1913, has been on the staff since 1895. He is also known to scholars as the author of the _Oxford Shakespeare Glossary_ and for his editorial part in _Shakespeare’s England_. The London Goldsmiths’ Company contributed £5,000 towards the cost of the sixth volume of the Dictionary, the title-page of which records their generous support. Apart from this the whole of the editorial and manufacturing cost of the work has been borne by the Delegates of the Press, who have defrayed from their general revenues a heavy annual outlay for many years. This has necessarily risen since the war, and it is fortunate that so large a part of the work had been completed under conditions less onerous than now obtain.
The price of the Dictionary has been kept very low, the sections being published at the rate of 2_s._ 6_d._ for sixty-four pages or less than a halfpenny per page containing on an average over 300 lines of type and nearly 3,000 words. Few books have ever been sold at so low a rate. The prices of volumes and half volumes stoutly bound in leather have necessarily been advanced in recent years to meet the enhanced cost of manufacturing; but the price of the Dictionary is still no more than nominal, if regard is paid to the outlay precedent to the actual manufacture of the books. Sections in paper wrappers, issued after 1920, will be priced at the rate of 5_s._ for sixty-four pages; but it is not proposed to raise the price of the bulk of the work in this form. The London _Times_ in 1897 described the Dictionary as ‘the greatest effort which any University, it may be any printing press, has taken in hand since the invention of printing.... It will be not the least of the glories of the University of Oxford to have completed this gigantic task’. Lord Curzon in his _Letter to the University_ of 1909 wrote: ‘In the staff of the English Dictionary alone the Press contributes to the University what is probably the largest single engine of Research working anywhere at the present time.’
Continuing the work of the founder, Mrs. George Smith undertook a Supplement covering the years 1901-1911, which was produced by Sir Sidney Lee in 1912-13. This, as the first of a series of twentieth-century volumes, inaugurated what may be regarded as a second and distinct work. Further, in 1903 was published in one volume an _Index and Epitome_ to the Dictionary, giving within 1,500 pages 30,000 succinct biographies. The value of this compendium, to the very large non-professional public to whom the main work in twenty-two bulky volumes is not readily accessible, need not be emphasized. It has been thought proper, however, to lay stress upon its usefulness as an independent work of reference, which may fairly be expected to take its place, upon thousands of shelves, along with other compendious dictionaries and encyclopaedias; the Index and Epitome, therefore, along with the Index and Epitome to the Supplement of 1901-11, bound with it, is now issued under the short title of _Concise Dictionary of National Biography_.
The Dictionary of National Biography, with the responsibility for its maintenance, was offered to the University of Oxford in 1917 and gratefully accepted. Work is now in progress on a further decennial supplement covering the years 1912-21. This supplement will be edited by Mr. H. W. Carless Davis of Balliol and Mr. J. R. H. Weaver of Trinity. The Supplement of 1901-11, the _Concise Dictionary_, and many volumes of the main work, have recently been reprinted from plates; and the sale of the work shows an improvement when compared with the years preceding the war. Whether it will in the future be found practicable to attempt the systematic revision of the main work must still remain in doubt. The manufacturing expense of a new edition would be very heavy, and could be justified only by searching investigations, leading to a very substantial gain in accuracy, which must occupy years and involve a further heavy expenditure. The total outlay required has been estimated at £100,000, and this perhaps could not be defrayed without the munificence of a second founder. It may, however, be hoped that such a work will not at last languish for lack of funds. Meanwhile, under the direction of Mr. H. W. CARLESS DAVIS, the Delegates’ adviser upon the Dictionary, preliminary work is being steadily carried on. Subject-indexes have been prepared; a bibliography is in hand of the biographical literature which has accumulated since the publication of the Dictionary; and various special investigations are being made into periods for which the work is especially in need of revision. When it is remembered that a whole army of scholars was continually at work upon the material of the _New English Dictionary_ for more than a quarter of a century before the first page was sent to press, it will be seen that the material of the _Dictionary of National Biography_ may have to be newly surveyed with something of the same elaboration, if that Dictionary is ever to be rebuilt from its foundations.
The Oxford Medical Publications were awarded the Grand Prix at the seventeenth International Congress of Medicine held in London in 1913. This award was bestowed for the general excellence of the Students’ books produced in the Series, and for the production of new and original work therein. In 1916 the Committee sustained a great loss in the death of their Editor, James Keogh Murphy. A further heavy loss was sustained at the end of 1919 by the death of Sir William Osler, whose advice and assistance had always been of inestimable value. After the death of Mr. Murphy, the Editorship was temporarily undertaken by Lieut.-Colonel Sir D’Arcy Power, who was responsible for several important additions to the Series, including the well-known _Oxford War Primers of Medicine and Surgery_. Towards the close of hostilities Captain Robert McNair Wilson, M.B., Ch.B., late Assistant to Sir James Mackenzie under the Medical Research Committee, became Editor, and under his direction further important additions have been made, including _Menders of the Maimed_ by Professor Arthur Keith, _Studies in Neurology_ by Henry Head, _Operative Treatment of Chronic Intestinal Stasis_ by Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane, _Diagnosis and Treatment of Venereal Diseases in General Practice_ by Brevet-Colonel L. W. Harrison, D.S.O., _Plastic Surgery of the Face_ by Major H. D. Gillies, C.B.E., R.A.M.C., _War Neuroses and Shell Shock_ by Sir Frederick Mott, K.B.E., _Trench Fever_ by Lieut.-Colonel W. Byam, O.B.E., _Clinical Ophthalmology for the General Practitioner_ by A. Maitland Ramsay, and _Tropical Ophthalmology_ by Lieut.-Colonel R. H. Elliot, I.M.S. The present Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, Sir Archibald Garrod, is a Delegate of the Press and an Oxford author.
The Oxford Catalogue now devotes many pages to the medical list, and the American Branch, by the publication of the encyclopaedic ‘loose-leaf’ _Oxford Surgery_, has produced an important and valuable adaptation of a British original. In the _Quarterly Journal of Medicine_ the University possesses one of the most valuable scientific journals in the world; and in the other medical publications it administers what is at once a valuable property and a powerful instrument of education. Oxford medical books are known wherever English is spoken. § 9. _Oxford Books for Boys and Girls_ The more recent activities of the Press include a notable enterprise, started by Mr. Henry Frowde jointly with Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, but now carried on by Mr. Milford alone. This was the foundation in 1907 of a new department for the issue of educational works for elementary schools, and of ‘gift-books’, useful and recreative literature, for young people of all ages. The Oxford Reading Books, which headed the list, set a new literary standard for books of the class; and the series established itself not only in this country but in parts of the Empire so remote and so diverse as Australia and Burma. It was followed by further series of reading books, and of books on history, geography, arithmetic, nature study, and other subjects of the elementary curriculum. The part taken by the Press in the educational system of the English-speaking world may now be said to comprehend the whole scholastic field from the infant school upwards.
Concurrently with the school publications, the J. Department, as it is known for convenience, has issued from Falcon Square a great variety of books for the leisure hours of boys and girls. These include finely illustrated editions of classics, such as _Robinson Crusoe_, Grimm’s _Tales_, Kingsley’s _Water Babies_, _Alice in Wonderland_; books on nature, science, industry, imperial history; miscellanies both instructive and entertaining; stories for boys, girls, and young children; and for the very youngest, picture books of all kinds. All these publications are edited with care, and both on the literary and on the artistic side a high level of excellence is aimed at. Some two million copies of the books are distributed during the year.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.