John Considine taught English at the University of Alberta in Canada until 2021. He is the author of three books about the history of dictionaries in Europe from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, including Small Dictionaries and Curiosity: Lexicography and Fieldwork in Post-Medieval Europe (OUP, 2017). He is also the editor of the Cambridge World History of Lexicography and a number of other volumes, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary, of which he was formerly an assistant editor.

• Acknowledgements List of illustrations Abbreviations Conventions Prologue 1: The medieval inheritance 2: The first printed dictionaries of English, French, and Latin 3: Palsgrave and some contemporaries 4: The Dictionary of Sir Thomas Elyot 5: Polyglot dictionaries 6: Bilingual dictionaries of vernacular languages in the 1540s and 1550s 7: Latin dictionaries of the 1550s 8: The Thesaurus of Thomas Cooper 9: Elizabethan dictionaries of vernacular languages before Florio 10: Dictionaries of Latin from 1565 to 1580 11: Dictionaries of Latin and Greek from 1581 to 1600 12: Wordlists with Hebrew, Arabic, and Armenian 13: The dictionaries of Florio and Minsheu 14: Specialized wordlists of English after the 1530s 15: Lists of old words 16: Lists of hard words, and of words in general use Afterword Bibliography Index

It is a well-researched, well-written, and engaging book that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in this topic.

John Considine taught English at the University of Alberta in Canada until 2021. He is the author of three books about the history of dictionaries in Europe from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, including Small Dictionaries and Curiosity: Lexicography and Fieldwork in Post-Medieval Europe (OUP, 2017). He is also the editor of the Cambridge World History of Lexicography and a number of other volumes, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary, of which he was formerly an assistant editor.

• Acknowledgements List of illustrations Abbreviations Conventions Prologue 1: The medieval inheritance 2: The first printed dictionaries of English, French, and Latin 3: Palsgrave and some contemporaries 4: The Dictionary of Sir Thomas Elyot 5: Polyglot dictionaries 6: Bilingual dictionaries of vernacular languages in the 1540s and 1550s 7: Latin dictionaries of the 1550s 8: The Thesaurus of Thomas Cooper 9: Elizabethan dictionaries of vernacular languages before Florio 10: Dictionaries of Latin from 1565 to 1580 11: Dictionaries of Latin and Greek from 1581 to 1600 12: Wordlists with Hebrew, Arabic, and Armenian 13: The dictionaries of Florio and Minsheu 14: Specialized wordlists of English after the 1530s 15: Lists of old words 16: Lists of hard words, and of words in general use Afterword Bibliography Index

It is a well-researched, well-written, and engaging book that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in this topic.

John Considine taught English at the University of Alberta in Canada until 2021. He is the author of three books about the history of dictionaries in Europe from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, including Small Dictionaries and Curiosity: Lexicography and Fieldwork in Post-Medieval Europe (OUP, 2017). He is also the editor of the Cambridge World History of Lexicography and a number of other volumes, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary, of which he was formerly an assistant editor.

• Acknowledgements List of illustrations Abbreviations Conventions Prologue 1: The medieval inheritance 2: The first printed dictionaries of English, French, and Latin 3: Palsgrave and some contemporaries 4: The Dictionary of Sir Thomas Elyot 5: Polyglot dictionaries 6: Bilingual dictionaries of vernacular languages in the 1540s and 1550s 7: Latin dictionaries of the 1550s 8: The Thesaurus of Thomas Cooper 9: Elizabethan dictionaries of vernacular languages before Florio 10: Dictionaries of Latin from 1565 to 1580 11: Dictionaries of Latin and Greek from 1581 to 1600 12: Wordlists with Hebrew, Arabic, and Armenian 13: The dictionaries of Florio and Minsheu 14: Specialized wordlists of English after the 1530s 15: Lists of old words 16: Lists of hard words, and of words in general use Afterword Bibliography Index

It is a well-researched, well-written, and engaging book that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in this topic.