Alston XII 709.
Rare. ESTC records BL, Bodley and St Andrews [this is not in the online catalogue and may be a confusion with Aberdeen] only in the U.K.; Indiana State (in the Cordell Dictionary collection) only in the USA. WorldCat adds a copy at Aberdeen University. Allston adds four copies in European libraries (including the Bibliotheque Nationale).
Thomas Nugent’s (c.1700-1772) New Pocket Dictionary - “for the use of Schools and private Gentlemen” - was published by Charles and Edward Dilly on Thursday 13th August 1767 prices at 3s “bound and clasped” (see the advertisement in the London Evening Post). Nugent explains the advantage of this compact dictionary in his preface: “by the smallness of its size the following repository of words is become portable to Learners of both Languages [English and French], by which means they can have an easier recourse to it, so often as anything occurs in conversation or reading, with which they are unacquainted. The smallness of the size renders it also of easy purchase, and proper on that accounts in Schools, where Dictionaries of large bulk an expense are become a burden” (A2r). On the composition of the dictionary he notes that, “recourse has been had to the best Dictionaries, French and English, particularly to that of the Royal Academy, which is justly looked upon as the Standard of the French tongue; yet we have take the liberty to insert a few words not adopted by that learned body, where the particular energy of force of expression, seemed to justify the use (A2v). Nugent’s dictionary was repeatedly re-printed into the 20th-century (Alston records a fiftieth edition in 1882 and a London edition of 1990).
All of the early editions are scarce. The first edition is also the only edition which is the sole product of Thomas Nugent – the following 1770 Dublin edition is “corrected and greatly improved by John Astruc” and most of the subsequent editions are edited by J. S. Charrier, French Master to the Royal Academy Portsmouth, who added a supplement of naval and military terms.
This copy is particularly interesting as the English/French volume appears to be in the “clasped” binding which is mentioned in the London Evening Post advertisement; the other volume though has never had a clasp. We know from the manuscript titles on the upper covers that the set is not mixed so it is curious why they are not uniformly bound.
