A New Greek and English Lexicon Principally on the Plan of the Greek and German Lexicon of Schneider: the Words Alphabetically Arragned

Boston, MA: Hilliard, Gray & Company. Good. 1832. 1st American Edition. Hardcover. This is the "First American, from the Second London Edition, Revised and Enlarged by R. B. Patton" (from the title page) . This is an oversized (thick) volume (approx. 3" in depth). The calf covered boards are in generally good condition and the hinges are secure (which is probably a miracle, considering) , however, there is tearing to the outer front joint and all four corners of the covers have wear, and bits of leather missing, showing the boards underneath. The rear cover of the book has the outer layer of leather rubbed away or torn away for about one third of the area, giving it a well used look. The text pages are generally clean, though there are spots of foxing, what looks like a couple underlinings done by either the tip of a hot poker or a burning tool. One page has several small splotches of paint. The front pastedown page includes an inked math problem, along with several penciled math problems. "We start in Oxford, in the nineteenth century. The first Greek-English dictionary was published by a man called James Donnegan in 1826, but it was riddled with errors and inconsistencies, and so classicists were clamouring for an alternative. This is where we meet two friends: Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott who both worked at Oxford University. It was Liddell, the more authoritative of the two, who was initially asked to start compiling a new English-Greek dictionary, but he consented only if Scott would be asked as well. Liddell was from an affluent background and went on to become Vice-Chancellor of the whole university (he had a daughter called Alice who would become immortalized in Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland). "(from gorffennol blog). And also: "Spare a thought for the little-known James Donnegan, the Irish physician whose 1826 A New Greek and English Lexicon; Principally on the Plan of the Greek and German Lexicon of Schneider was the British market leader prior to L&S. Donnegan’s fourth edition was published in 1842, the year before L&S appeared. Apparently a denunciation of Donnegan’s work was suppressed from the preface of the first edition of L&S, which itself was derived from F. Passow’s Handwörterbuch der griechischen Sprache (1st ed. 1819-24, 4th ed. 1831)." (from Quinquennium) .