An English and Swedish dictionary: wherein the generality of words and various significations are rendered into Swedish and Latin ... thereunto is added a large collection of terms of trade and navigation, and an herbal or index of plants...
printed at Harg and Stenbro near Nykoping in Sweden, by Pet. Momma: 1757. Second edition, with large additions and amendments, 4to, pp. [8], 16 & unpaginated lexicon in double column, edges rubbed, small cracks starting at the tops and bottoms of the joints, but generally a very good copy in contemporary quarter calf over marbled boards; binding firm. With a 'Table of Terms of Trade and Navigation' and 'Words of Command and Sea-Terms' occupying 17 pages at the back, and another on herbal terms occupying another 12 pages. Serenius was chaplin to the Swedish embassy in London 1725-35, where he tried to strengthen the relations between Sweden and Great Britain. It was during this time that he began work on his dictionary, Dictionarium Suethico-Anglo-Latinum, first published in Stockholm in 1741. Termed the second edition, the present work is basically a new undertaking, being twice the size of the original, with a much expanded emphasis on etymology. Serenius states in his preface that he has been influenced by Edward Lye, and 'in a manner excited by the late lexicographer Mr. Johnson, that prodigy of laboriousness and sagacity, who in the preface to his excellent Dictionary complains of a scanty knowledge in northern literature ... I must own that the judicious author is aright." This must be one of the earliest acknowledgements by a foreign lexicographer of the achievements of Johnson. Serenius does not say so, but it seems likely that some of the etymologies were borrowed from him. Item #1079
Price: $500.00
