Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755.
The work appeared on 15 April 1755 after Johnson spent about seven years preparing it. London booksellers commissioned him in 1746, offering 1,500 guineas. Johnson originally suggested that the project could be completed in three years, but the scale of the task proved far greater.
Johnson worked largely alone, with clerical help to copy illustrative quotations from books. The first edition was a large folio work in two volumes, containing definitions, usage information, and literary examples. Its definitions could be witty or opinionated, but the dictionary’s historical influence was enormous.
Johnson’s Dictionary remained the pre-eminent English dictionary in Britain until the Oxford English Dictionary was completed more than a century later. The year 1789 belongs to the French Revolution, 1828 to Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, and 1711 predates Johnson’s project.