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Original Leaves from Famous Books
Show more"In the year 1748, Dodsley, the best known publisher of London, and six other bookseller paid Samuel Johnson a sum of ?1575 to compile a Dictionary of the English Language. This sum emboldened Johnson to move from his squalid quarters in the Strand to a pretentious house on Gough Square, in London, where he and five or six amanuenses labored for seven years, instead of three as first planned. Johnson's method was to read incessantly the best authors and to underscore the illustrative quotations he wished used and then to give them to his assistants to insert in their proper places. The general excellence of the definitions, the judicious selection of quotations, the etymologies, though often faulty, make the Dictionary useful and entertaining reading today. "Pension, an allowance made to anyone without an equivalence. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country". "Lexicographer" Johnson defined as "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people". Johnson in the preface reveals much of himself. "... In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed;...that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great, not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but in midst of inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow..." The work was printed by W. Strahan and seen through the press by Andrew Millar, one of the underwriting publishers. The underwriters received excellent returns on their original investment as edition after edition issued from the presses." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
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Show more"Samuel Johnson was an Episcopal minister in Connecticut. He refused Benjamin Franklin's offer of first presidency of the Academy of Pennsylvania (now the University of Pennsylvania). Three years later, he accepted the same office at King's College (now Columbia University). Johnson, did, however, prepare two texts for the students of Franklin's academy, who ranged from fourteen to sixteen years of age. The first of these was Noetica. The title page states, "The First PRINCIPLES of Human Knowledge, Being a LOGICK including both METAPHYSICS and DIALETIC or the art of REASONING with a brief PATHOLOGY, and an Account of the gradual progress of the HUMAN MIND, from the first Dawnings of Sense to the Highest Perfection". The full title for Ethica, the second work is, "The First PRINCIPLE of Moral Philosophy and especially that part which is called ETHICS in a CHAIN of necessary CONSEQUENCES from certain FACTS" Benjamin Franklin, because of his wide interest, important inventions, searching intellect and epoch-making contribution to democratic government, is considered one of the most distinguished of men, as well as the outstanding printer in his own period. During his long and busy life, here and abroad, his interest in printing never lessened. When he wrote his will in his closing days of his life, it began: "I, Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, Printer, Late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States to the court of France..." (Ege, Otto F.) "The first college textbooks to be written and printed in North America"
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
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Show more"James Thomson, like Virgil, with leisure assured by patrons and political pension, had unusual opportunities to observe nature and to write and rewrite his poems. The various parts of The Seasons first appeared between the years 1726 and 1730 and in their final polished form in 1744. With their swelling phrases and Latinized diction, these poems of Thomson are superficially Miltonic. Dr. Johnson wrote of Thomson, "The reader of The Seasons wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shows hum that he never felt what Thomson impresses". Today we still enjoy the sensitiveness to light and movement, the ultimate knowledge of the ways of animals and birds, and the ability of Thomson in his Seasons to lure us from a real world to imaginative reverie. With a subtle appreciation of quiet rural life is coupled a conception of a God in nature, as well as an unquestioning in the God of orthodox Christianity, and there is also an apparently unrelated enthusiasm for economic progress in Britain. "It seems paradoxical that Bodoni, the founder of "classic" formalism in printing, chose to print Thomson's romantic Seasons in sumptuous format and to include the following in the dedication to his patron, David Steuart, of Edinburgh: "If I particularly wish immortality to any of my works it is to this, that the testimony of my respect and gratitude for a person of so much worth and eminence may be handed down to future ages". Bodoni is often called "The King of Typographers and the Typographer of Kings". According to Peddie, Bodoni "incontestably represents the highest point of aestheticism that can be reached by typography." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
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