The Garret Lexicography Project: Rethinking Samuel Johnson’s House of Words.
The Garret Lexicography Project: Rethinking Samuel Johnson’s House of Words.
Knowledge Exchange Fellow
Professor Lynda Mugglestone | English Faculty | University of Oxford
Partner Organisation
Dr Johnson's House | Celine McDaid, The Hyde Director and Curator
Between 1747 and 1755, the garret in 17 Gough Square in London was home to the making of Samuel Johnson’s iconic two-volume Dictionary of the English Language. On one hand, the garret is unique as a space where early dictionary making can be located in situ. On the other, what this means has often remained critically unexplored. In the ‘Garret Lexicography Project’, Lynda Mugglestone, Professor of the History of English, and Celine McDaid, Curator of Johnson’s House, will redirect attention to the garret as a writerly and collaborative space, and the birthplace of a book of international cultural significance.
As we explore, the garret was the decisive factor in Johnson’s move to Gough Square. It was spacious enough not only for the material Johnson needed, but also for his assistants or ‘under drudges’ -- whose often marginalised stories form another important part of this project, alongside the work they carried out. The quiet, and tidiness, of the garret in 2024 can deceive. As part of the project, an exhibition – located within the garret itself -- will shape a new understanding of the realities of production, drawing on surviving artefacts of Johnson’s dictionary years.
The return of Johnson’s dictionary desk to the garret for the first time since 1759 -- courtesy of a long-term loan from Pembroke College, Oxford – is a key element. For Johnson, desks and dictionary-making were closely aligned. Poems, he stated, can be written while ‘walking the fields or lying in bed’. But dictionaries were different. By definition, Johnson insisted, 'composing a Dictionary requires books and a desk'.
Across the exhibition, we will explore how Johnson’s working methods took shape, looking behind the print text to a world of pencil, ink, and quill pens, where words and usage are copied, laboriously, by hand, and a dictionary is crafted slowly through the years.
Researcher
Celine McDaid was appointed Deputy Curator of Johnson’s House in London in March 2013 and became The Hyde Director and Curator of Dr Johnson’s House in September 2014. She has a keen interest in Johnson and many aspects of eighteenth-century life and culture, and has staged a wide range of exhibitions at the House including Shakespeare in the 18th Century, and tercentenary exhibitions for the great actor David Garrick, and the celebrated classicist, Elizabeth Carter.
