Timeline

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary Timeline

1694

The first edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise is published in four volumes in Paris

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1700

John Dryden, one of the most quoted authors in the Dictionary, dies

1702

John Kersey publishes A New English Dictionary; or, A Complete Collection of the Most Proper and Significant Words, Commonly Used in the Language

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1709

Samuel Johnson is born in Lichfield

1712

Alexander Pope publishes the first version of The Rape of the Lock

1719

Daniel Defoe publishes the first part of Robinson Crusoe

1721

Nathan Bailey publishes An Universal Etymological English Dictionary, the most popular dictionary of the eighteenth century

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1723

Thomas Dyche publishes a small Dictionary of All the Words Commonly Us’d in the English Tongue

1726

Work begins on the Diccionario de la lengua española

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Jonathan Swift publishes Gulliver’s Travels

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1728

Samuel Johnson matriculates at Pembroke College, Oxford

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1729

John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera opens at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre

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Samuel Johnson, unable to pay the fees, is forced to leave Oxford without a degree

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1730

Nathan Bailey publishes the first edition of the Dictionarium Britannicum

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1732

SJ serves as a teacher at Market Bosworth Grammar School, earning £20 a year; he leaves after a few months

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1735

SJ marries Elizabeth “Tetty” Porter, and uses her money to open a boarding school at Edial

SJ’s first book, a translation of Jerónimo Lobo’s travel book about Abyssinia, is published

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Thomas Dyche’s New General English Dictionary: Particularly Calculated for the Use and Improvement of Such as Are Unacquainted with the Learned Languages is published

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1736

Nathan Bailey publishes the second edition of the Dictionarium Britannicum, SJ’s most important predecessor

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1737

SJ’s Edial School is forced to close

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