The Making and Use of Dictionaries in England 1400-1800 (MAUDE)

The MAUDE project is intended to bring international scholars as well as scholars in Finland together in an integrated research effort to inquire into the relatively neglected area of English lexicography from the manuscript and early printed dictionaries to the height of the influence of Dr. Johnson about the end of the eighteenth century, and the beginnings of the move towards the Philological Society’s dictionary. Although interest has been steadily rising over the last few decades, and individual scholars have made very significant contributions, no serious and concerted attempt has ever been made to survey and investigate:

1.  the history of lexicography in this period
2.  the areas of lexicography which lie outside the traditional area of the monolingual English dictionary
3. the bi- and multi-lingual dictionary
4. the implications the practice of lexicography had for society more generally and scholarship in particular
5. the emergence of the dictionary as a universal educational, commercial and domestic tool
6. the readership and use of dictionaries in this period
7. the printing history of dictionaries
8. the broad relationships between lexicography and other linguistic endeavours such as the management and dissemination of knowledge, the universal character movement, ascertainment of the language, the emergence of popular grammars and spelling-books, the rise of various sciences, and so on.