On this day in history: First part of the Oxford English Dictionary published, 1884

On 1st February 1884 the Oxford University Press (OUP) published the first part of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society. The 352 page fascicle had 352 pages containing words from A to Ant, costing 12s.6d. Over the next forty-four years 125 fascicles were published to form the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

The dictionary originated in June 1857 when three members of the Philological Society - Herbert Coleridge, and Frederick Furnivall, and Richard Chenevix Trench - formed an Unregistered Words Committee to identify words missing from existing dictionaries. The following year the society decided to produce a comprehensive dictionary of English words, based on quotations taken from printed works. The society allocated books to volunteers who would produce quotation slips that illustrated the usage of particular words.

Coleridge became the first editor in 1860. When he died the following year, he had received around 100,000 quotation slips. Furnivall took over as editor before recruiting James Murray as his successor in 1879. Furnivall and Murray met with a number of publishers before finally securing an agreement with the OUP in 1879, which published the first fascicle five years later.

In 1895, the title Oxford English Dictionary first appeared on the outer covers of the fascicles. Following the publication of the final fascicle on 19th April 1928, the OUP published the entire Dictionary in bound volumes. The OUP published a second edition in 1989, and is currently working on a third.

To learn more, visit the Dictionary's web pages, which include a History of the OED.

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On this day in history: First edition of The Times published, 1785

In 1781, a wealthy London coal merchant called John Walters joined Lloyd's insurance company only to be left bankrupt by series of disasters. Undeterred, he decided to try his hand as a printer. In 1782, he purchased the patent for a new method of printing using parts of words rather than single letters. He developed this technique and two years later he acquired a printing office in Blackfriars.

Walters started by printing books using his new method. Then, on 1st January 1785, he published the first edition of a daily newspaper called The Daily Universal Register, which he also edited. After three years, he changed the name of the newspaper to The Times.

Like many other newspaper proprietors, Walter supplemented his income with payments from the Treasury to print articles favourable to the government. This arrangement may have been more trouble than it was worth when he was found guilty of libel for publishing an attack on the royal dukes written by Thomas Steele, the joint secretary of the Treasury. After serving eighteen months in Newgate, Walter received a pardon from the Prince of Wales, and in 1795 he retired from the active running his printing business.

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On this day in history: Emily Brontë died, 1848

Born on 30th July 1818 at the Parsonage in Thornton, near Bradford, Yorkshire, Emily Jane Brontë was the fifth of six children of Revd. Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria. Nearly two years after her birth, Emily's family moved to the small industrial town of Haworth where her father had accepted the post of curate, which offered greater financial security. Unfortunately, a year and a half after the family relocated, Maria died.

Their mother's older sister Elizabeth Branwell stayed on with the family after nursing Maria during the last months of her life. While the older Brontë girls clashed with their aunt when she extolled the virtues of fastidiousness and self-discipline, Emily did not. As well as learning domestic skills the girls also received instruction in more academic subjects along with their brother Branwell.

The four oldest girls were sent to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, a newly founded institution that provided a formal education to the daughters of less wealthy Anglican clergymen. The poor conditions at Cowan Bridge resulted in a number of pupils contracting illnesses, including Emily's oldest two sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, both of whom contracted tuberculosis, wcich caused their deaths in 1825. Revd. Brontë brought Emily and her sister Charlotte home where he and Miss Branwell continued to educate them.

The four remaining siblings became a close-knit group, developing imaginary worlds that they began writing about. The four were separated when Charlotte attended Roe Head school in Mirfield. She later returned as a teacher there accompanied by Emily who went there as a pupil. After only three months Emily became so ill that she had to return home to be replaced at Roe Head by her sister Anne.

Divided from her sister Anne, with whom she was closest, Emily became more self-reliant and remained apart from the rest of her family. Much of her time was spent secretly writing poetry until she took the position of teacher at Law Hill girl's school near Halifax in 1838. She remained there for six months before another illness required that she return to Haworth.

Charlotte had the idea of setting up a school and persuaded their aunt to pay for her and Emily to attend a school in Brussels. Emily struggled through nine months of being the oldest pupil in a school where lessons were taught in French - a language she was not well versed in - before her father summoned her and Charlotte home because of the death of their aunt.

In 1845, Charlotte discovered one of Emily's poetry books, much to the annoyance of the younger sister. In spite of Emily's anger, the other Brontë children persuaded her to allow them to select poems to be submitted for publication along with other poems written by her sisters. A year later two girls published the collection called Poems pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Anne respectively).

Two years later, Emily, again under the name Ellis Bell, published the work for which she became famous: Wuthering Heights. This epic tale of the Earnshaws of Wuthering Heights and the Lintons of Thrushcross Grange confounded the critics of the day because of its innovative style. The publishers demanded that Emily contribute towards the publishing costs, even though they were using the Bell name to cash in on the success of Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte under the name Currer Bell.

The following year, Emily's brother Branwell died of tuberculosis - the symptoms of which had been masked by his alcoholism. At his funeral Emily contracted a cold that resulted in her own death on 18th December 1848. Following her death, Charlotte edited the two part Wuthering Heights into a single volume that was published under her real name.

The Project Gutenberg site hosts Poems and Wuthering Heights as well as other works by the Brontës.

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Publication of The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson: 9th December 1854

On this day in history: Publication of The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson, 1854

On 9th December 1854, the weekly magazine The Examiner included a poem written by the poet laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson called "The Charge of the Light Brigade". The narrative poem tells of a disastrous cavalry charge during the Battle of Balaclava on 25th October that year as part of the Crimean War. The battle pitched combined British, French and Ottoman forces against the Russian fortified port of Sevastopol.

Because of a breakdown in communication, over six-hundred British light cavalrymen, led by the Earl of Cardigan, received orders to capture a heavily armed Russian redoubt (small enclosed fort) at the other end of a valley. The army commander, Lord Raglan, actually wanted them to prevent the Russians from removing naval guns from another complex of redoubts that they had captured. As it was, the Light Brigade lost over 150 men, either killed or taken prisoner, and around 120 men were injured. Over 300 horses were either killed in battle or destroyed later because of their wounds.

News of the charge reached Britain weeks later. On reading about it in The Times, Tennyson was immediately inspired to write a poem about the engagement, according to his grandson, Sir Charles. The piece not only extolled the bravery of the troops but also reflected public dismay at the apparent futility of the charge; consequently, it quickly achieved popular acclaim, even being distributed to the troops serving in the Crimea.

The text of "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is available on Wikisource.

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On this day in history: First edition of Encyclopædia Britannica published, 1768

Two Edinburgh businessmen, a bookseller and printer called Colin Macfarquhar and the engraver Andrew Bell, decided to publish a new encyclopaedia in response to the Encyclopédie edited by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert. They contracted a 28-year-old scholar called William Smellie to edit the publication, paying him £200. Smellie abridged and edited articles from other sources, producing longer articles of grouped subjects as well as the usual shorter articles. Bell produced engravings for the 160 illustrations and Macfarquhar printed the texts at his Nicolson Street premises.

On 6th December 1768, the first part of the Encyclopædia Britannica or, a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences compiled under a New Plan went on sale, credited to "A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland". It was the first of one-hundred thick quarto pamphlets costing sixpence each (or eight pence for a version on finer paper). The last part appeared in 1771, and later that same year the whole 2,391 page encyclopaedia went on sale bound in three collected volumes for £12 per set.

The venture proved to be a success although not without controversy. The midwifery section included illustrations of female pelvises and foetuses, which proved upsetting to some readers, notably King George III, who commanded that the offending pages be torn from every copy. Nevertheless, Macfarquhar and Bell decided to produce an expanded second edition in 1776, and the encyclopaedia continues to be published to this day, making it the oldest English-language encyclopaedia still in print.

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On this day in history: First appearance of Sweeney Todd, 1846

The 21st November 1846 issue of Edward Lloyd's 'penny dreadful' The People's Periodical and Family Library contained the first part serialised story entitled The String of Pearls: A Romance. The story, which was published in eighteen weekly editions, tells of the mysterious disappearance of a naval officer called Lieutenant Thornhill, who is last seen entering the Fleet Street premises of a barber called Sweeney Todd. Thornhill was in possession of the string of pearls from the title.

The pearls were a gift for a girl named Johanna Oakley from her lover, Mark Ingestrie, who is presumed lost at sea. She joins forces with Colonel Jeffery, a friend of Thornhill's, to investigate the disappearance of the two men. Eventually, they uncover the grisly facts: Todd is killing rich patrons of his shop for their valuables, while his partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett, disposes of the bodies by using them as filling for her pies.

The story may have been based on an infamous murder from 1784 (the year before the setting of the Sweeney Todd story). A journeyman barber was shaving a gentleman, told of the barber of his exploits with a young woman who lived nearby. The barber assumed that the woman in question was his wife and slit his throat from ear to ear.

While the author of the The String of Pearls remains anonymous, the work is generally attributed to Thomas Peckett Prest; although, it may have been the work of James Malcolm Rymer. Both men wrote 'penny dreadfuls' for Lloyd, and both may have wanted to protect their professional reputations as composer and civil engineer respectively.

The text of The String of Pearls is available at the Victorian London website.

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On this day in history: The Hobbit first published, 1937

Some time in the early 1930s, the Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien was marking School Certificate papers when he found a blank sheet of paper. Suddenly inspired, he wrote the words: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." and returned to marking the papers. Over the next two years, Professor Tolkien drew on his love of mythology and his background as an scholar of Anglo-Saxon to write the story of a hobbit called Bilbo Baggins, who reluctantly joined Gandalf the wizard and a group of dwarves on their quest to find the treasure of a dragon called Smaug.

Tolkien wrote the story to entertain his three sons but he also let others read it, including the his fellow Oxford don, C. S. Lewis. On another occasion he lent a manuscript to Elaine Griffiths, a family friend and student of his. In 1936, Susan Dagnall, a member of staff at the publishers George Allen & Unwin, visited Griffiths who suggested that Dagnall read Tolkien's story.

Dagnall reacted so favourably to the tale that she showed it to her boss, Stanley Unwin. Unwin gave the book to his ten-year-old son Rayner, who he paid to write a review of it. Rayner wrote, "This book, with the help of maps, does not need any illustrations it is good and should appeal to all children between the ages of 5 and 9." This recommendation was enough for his father who decided to publish the book.

On 21st September 1937, George Allen & Unwin, Ltd published the first edition of The Hobbit with illustrations by Tolkien including those on the dust cover. The book was very well received, with all 1500 copies of the first print run selling by December. Translated into over forty languages, The Hobbit went on to become an international best-seller, as was its sequel The Lord of the Rings.

Read Anne T. Eaton's 1938 review of The Hobbit from the New York Times.

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On this day in history: Josiah Henson born, 1789

The man who partly inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe's character of Uncle Tom was born into slavery on 15th June 1789 in Charles County, Maryland, on the farm of Francis Newman. Newman owned his father and leased his mother from Dr. Josiah McPherson. As a child Josiah witnessed his father receiving one-hundred lashes followed by the cutting off of his ear. The punishment was meted out because his father attacked a white overseer for assaulting Josiah's mother. Later, Newman sold Josiah's father to a new owner in Alabama, never to be seen by his family again.

After the sale, Josiah and his mother returned to the estate of Dr. McPherson who named the young slave after himself. According to Henson, the doctor was a kindly man but a drunkard who was found drowned in a stream that he was apparently too inebriated to cross safely. McPherson's estate was sold off by his heirs, the sale included Josiah's mother and five older siblings. Josiah was initially sold to a tavern keeper called Robb, he was neglected and became sickly. As a result he was sold at a bargain price to his mother's new owner, Isaac Riley, after Josiah's mother begged Riley to let her tend for her youngest child.

Josiah repaid Riley's kindness by working hard on his land, eventually becoming the farm manager. While on the estate of Riley's brother, Amos, in Kentucky, he became a Methodist preacher and raised a family of his own. Nevertheless, he yearned for freedom and in 1829 gave his owner the $350 he had saved from preaching to buy his freedom, only to learn that Amos Riley had increased his price from the agreed $450, with $350 initial cash payment, to one-thousand dollars. His hopes of manumission dashed, he later learnt that he and his family might be sold again so he resolved to escape to freedom.

Henson, his wife and children crossed the Niagara River in October 1830, setting foot in the Province of Upper Canada where they effectively became free. Wishing to help his fellow escaped slaves, Josiah used money he had raised in the four years after arriving in Canada to found a two-hundred acre self-sufficient community in Dawn Township, near Dresden in Kent County. Over five hundred people lived at the Dawn Settlement, which exported black walnut to the United States and Britain.

He travelled to England a number of times to promote the community's wares and also to speak at meetings. In 1851 he travelled across the ocean to show his wares at the Great Exhibition. When Queen Victoria passed his display she asked whether he was indeed a fugitive slave, since his works carried the legend: "This is the product of the industry of a fugitive slave from the United States, whose residence is Dawn, Canada."

Josiah Henson died on 5th May 1885, in Dresden Ontraio, aged 94. Since his death he has received many honours: he was the first black man to appear on a Canadian stamp; his home and other buildings on the site of Dawn Settlement are preserved; and, in 1999 the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada declared him a National Historic Person and installed a plaque outside his relocated and restored cabin.

The University of North Caroline hosts a hypertext version of "Uncle Tom's Story of his life." An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson (Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom"). From 1789 to 1876.

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On this day in history: Samuel Pepys` last diary entry, 1669

From 1660 to 1669 the Naval administrator, Samuel Pepys, kept a diary that provides historians with an insight into Restoration London. Pepys was born on Fleet Street, London, in February 1633 to John Pepys, a tailor, and his wife Margaret, the daughter of a butcher. He attended Huntingdon Grammar School while staying with Huntingdonshire relations, before returning to London to continue his education at St Paul's School. He enrolled at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1654.

Pepys first job was as secretary to Edward Montagu, councillor of state for Oliver Cromwell's protectorate. In 1655 he married Elizabeth St. Michel, the fourteen-year-old daughter of an impoverished Frenchman. A few years later Pepys began working part-time as a teller in the Exchequer while still working for Montagu who had become a general-at-sea.

Following the restoration of the monarchy, Montagu became the Earl of Sandwich and a Knight of the Garter. With this influence he secured a post for Pepys at the Navy Board as clerk of the acts. By this time Pepys eyesight was failing and as a result he had to stop writing the diary that was to secure his place in posterity. He wrote his last entry on 31st May 1669:

And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear: and, therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to have it kept by my people in long-hand, and must therefore be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there be any thing, which cannot be much, now my amours to Deb. are past, and my eyes hindering me in almost all other pleasures, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add, here and there, a note in short-hand with my own hand.

And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave: for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!

In spite of his inability to see, Pepys' administrative ability secured him the promotion to Secretary to the Admiralty Commission in 1673. By then he had also become a member of the Royal Society, received the freedom of the city of Portsmouth, and that same year he became Member of Parliament for Castle Rising in Norfolk. Three years later he was elected as a Master of Trinity House (the body that administered England's lighthouses) and in 1679 he became M.P. for Harwich in Essex.

A loyal supporter of King James II, he resigned his posts at the Admiralty following the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Over the next two years he was twice jailed in the Tower of London on suspicion of conducting treasonable correspondence with the exiled court in France. Following his release he retired from public life, and lived the last few years of his life outside the city in Clapham before his death on 26th May 1703.

Project Gutenberg includes the complete text of the Diary of Samuel Pepys.

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On this day in history: Shakespeare died, 1616

On 23rd April 1616 William Shakespeare died at the age of 52 at his home in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, Shakespeare is also believed to have been born on April 23rd; although, the only extant record is of his baptism on the 26th April 1564 at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Following his marriage in 1582 to Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his senior, Shakespeare established himself as an actor and playwright in Elizabethan London. He worked for a variety of patrons including the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Southampton. He also appeared before Queen Elizabeth I on various occasions and was one of the owners of the Globe Theatre.

Having made his fortune, Shakespeare retired to Stratford. His plays were still performed and a collection of his sonnets was published in 1609. Following his death from unknown causes, he was buried at Holy Trinity Church in a grave that is marked with an epitaph written by the man himself.

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

For more information on the 'Bard of Stratford' see the biographical essay at the Shakespeare Resource Center site, which also includes an excellent set of links.

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On this day in history: Thomas Bodley knighted, 1604

The Bodleian Library at Oxford University is one of the most famous in the world. It was named after an ex-diplomat and fellow of Merton College, Thomas Bodley. Bodley used the wealth he had acquired by marrying the widow of a pilchard magnate to save the library. The University used his money to house the existing collection of books and around 2,500 new texts donated by Bodley and others. The library opened its doors to the public in November 1602, four years after the University accepted Bodley's largess.

Two years later, on 18th April, 1604, King James I of England (James VI of Scotland) knighted Bodley. That same year the King, who was already a patron of the Library, granted the Bodleian an endowment of lands. When he died in 1613 the library also received a large part of Sir Thomas' fortune which, in part, has enabled it to survive until the present day.

For more information on Sir Thomas Bodley's life see the biography at the NNDB web-site; for more details of the Bodleian visit the History page on the Library's web-site.

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On this day in history: Samuel Johnson`s Dictionary published, 1755

"Dictionary, s. a book explaining the words of any language alphabetically; a lexicon"

The above definition is taken from Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, first published on 15th April 1755. Johnson was born in 1709 in Lichfield, Staffordshire. He attended Pembroke College, Oxford, for a just over a year until a lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher he eventually moved to London where he became an essayist contributing to various journals. A skilled writer, he went on to become one of the leading literary figures of his age.

Whilst not the first dictionary in the English language - that honour belongs to Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall of 1604 - Dr. Johnson's dictionary is widely regarded as one of the most influential. The first edition contained definitions of 42,773 words and took about nine years to compile. You can read more about Dr. Johnson and his dictionary in Jack Lynch's guide on the Rutgers University web-site. For those that are interested in the earliest dictionary of the English language, University of Toronto's website hosts a hypertext copy of Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall.

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On this day in history: First official Poet Laureate to British Crown, 1668

Whilst there had been various unofficial royal poets previously, the first person to be officially recognised as Poet Laureate by letters patent was John Dryden who received the honour from King Charles II on 13th April, 1668. Born into the Puritan landowning gentry in August 1631, Dryden grew up in Northamptonshire before attending Westminster School, as a King's Scholar. After graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge, Dryden relocated to London where he found a position with the Protectorate Government.

In 1658, he published his first major work, Heroique Stanzas. Two years later he produced an enthusiastic panegyric poem, Astraea Redux, in celebration of the Restoration of the monarchy. Over the following decade Dryden's fame as a poet and literary critic grew resulting in his laureateship. Charles also conferred upon him the title of historiographer royal in August 1670.

Following the ascension to the throne of King James II, an avowed Catholic, in February 1685, Dryden converted to the same faith. Apparently, this was not to curry favour with the new monarch who had rapidly promoted many Catholics to high public office. Dryden was a critic of this policy, which - in his view - was counter-productive. Indeed, in 1688, a number of powerful political magnates approached William of Orange and his Stuart wife, Mary, with the offer of the Crown in order to protect Protestantism in Britain.

James went into exile, and Dryden lost his position as poet laureate to his rival, Thomas Shadwell, because he would not swear allegiance to the new monarchs. He continued to write until his death from gangrene in 1700. He was initially buried in a parish church before being interred in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.

You can find out more about Dryden and his works on his page at the Bartleby web site. Project Gutenberg also hosts a number of Dryden's works.

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On this day in history: Volume One of Gibbon`s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire published, 1776

Edward Gibbon was born in Putney, Surrey, in April 1737 into a wealthy family with Jacobite sympathies. Edward's mother died when he was ten and his father descended into depression, but even before then his parents had been neglectful of their son. Consequently his "Aunt Kitty," Catherine Porten, raised him through his many childhood illnesses.

Despite his continued illness hampering his education, his father secured him a place at Magdalen College, Oxford. His time there was not happy, so rather than attend college he continued his own undirected reading. His voracious appetite for books resulted in him developing an attraction to Catholicism, which he converted to in 1753.

For many Britons of the time, Roman Catholicism was tantamount to treason, particularly for those linked with the Jacobite cause. Within weeks of Edward's conversion, his father sent him to Lausanne, Switzerland, under the care and tutelage of a Reformed pastor called David Pavillard. On Christmas Day, 1754, Edward Gibbon took communion and returned to Protestantism.

Following Gibbon's return to England, in 1759 he enlisted in the South Hampshire militia and was on active duty until December 1762. Meanwhile, he published his first book, Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature (1761). Following his deactivation from the militia, he traveled around continental Europe on the Grand Tour, including a visit to Rome.

While he was in Rome, Gibbon first conceived of the idea of writing a history of the decline and fall of the ancient city, an idea that he later expanded to take in the entire Roman Empire. Independently wealthy after receiving an inheritance when his father died in 1770, he divided his time between writing and the social whirl of London's literary circle. In 1774 he became a Freemason and also Member of Parliament for Liskeard in Cornwall.

On 17th February 1776, he published the first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The book became an overnight success, earning its author around £1000 and widespread fame. Over the next twelve years he wrote and published a further five volumes. The last three volumes he wrote while living in Lausanne following his retirement from public life.

Gibbon argued that the Roman Empire fell due to the degeneration of civic virtue. He attributed this decline partly to the adoption of Christianity by the Romans who then became more concerned with the prospect of a better life after death and less inclined to make sacrifices for the Empire. An end to the Roman martial spirit and the hiring of barbarian mercenaries to defend the Empire spelled doom.

With his magnum opus completed Gibbon began work on his memoires as well as other historical texts. In 1793, with the French Revolutionary Wars raging across Europe, Gibbon made the perilous journey back to England to comfort a bereaved friend. Gibbon's own health was failing and he died while in London in January 1794 after succumbing to an infection contracted during surgery on a swelling in his groin.

Project Gutenberg hosts all six volumes of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

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On this day in history: First part of the Oxford English Dictionary published, 1884

On 1st February 1884 the Oxford University Press (OUP) published the first part of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society. The 352 page fascicle had 352 pages containing words from A to Ant, costing 12s.6d. Over the next forty-four years 125 fascicles were published to form the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

The dictionary originated in June 1857 when three members of the Philological Society - Herbert Coleridge, and Frederick Furnivall, and Richard Chenevix Trench - formed an Unregistered Words Committee to identify words missing from existing dictionaries. The following year the society decided to produce a comprehensive dictionary of English words, based on quotations taken from printed works. The society allocated books to volunteers who would produce quotation slips that illustrated the usage of particular words.

Coleridge became the first editor in 1860. When he died the following year, he had received around 100,000 quotation slips. Furnivall took over as editor before recruiting James Murray as his successor in 1879. Furnivall and Murray met with a number of publishers before finally securing an agreement with the OUP in 1879, which published the first fascicle five years later.

In 1895, the title Oxford English Dictionary first appeared on the outer covers of the fascicles. Following the publication of the final fascicle on 19th April 1928, the OUP published the entire Dictionary in bound volumes. The OUP published a second edition in 1989, and is currently working on a third.

To learn more, visit the Dictionary's web pages, which include a History of the OED.

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On this day in history: First edition of The Times published, 1785

In 1781, a wealthy London coal merchant called John Walters joined Lloyd's insurance company only to be left bankrupt by series of disasters. Undeterred, he decided to try his hand as a printer. In 1782, he purchased the patent for a new method of printing using parts of words rather than single letters. He developed this technique and two years later he acquired a printing office in Blackfriars.

Walters started by printing books using his new method. Then, on 1st January 1785, he published the first edition of a daily newspaper called The Daily Universal Register, which he also edited. After three years, he changed the name of the newspaper to The Times.

Like many other newspaper proprietors, Walter supplemented his income with payments from the Treasury to print articles favourable to the government. This arrangement may have been more trouble than it was worth when he was found guilty of libel for publishing an attack on the royal dukes written by Thomas Steele, the joint secretary of the Treasury. After serving eighteen months in Newgate, Walter received a pardon from the Prince of Wales, and in 1795 he retired from the active running his printing business.

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First appearance of Sweeney Todd: 21st November 1846
Publication of The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson: 9th December 1854
First issue of Rolling Stone published, 9th November 1967

On this day in history: Emily Brontë died, 1848

Born on 30th July 1818 at the Parsonage in Thornton, near Bradford, Yorkshire, Emily Jane Brontë was the fifth of six children of Revd. Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria. Nearly two years after her birth, Emily's family moved to the small industrial town of Haworth where her father had accepted the post of curate, which offered greater financial security. Unfortunately, a year and a half after the family relocated, Maria died.

Their mother's older sister Elizabeth Branwell stayed on with the family after nursing Maria during the last months of her life. While the older Brontë girls clashed with their aunt when she extolled the virtues of fastidiousness and self-discipline, Emily did not. As well as learning domestic skills the girls also received instruction in more academic subjects along with their brother Branwell.

The four oldest girls were sent to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, a newly founded institution that provided a formal education to the daughters of less wealthy Anglican clergymen. The poor conditions at Cowan Bridge resulted in a number of pupils contracting illnesses, including Emily's oldest two sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, both of whom contracted tuberculosis, wcich caused their deaths in 1825. Revd. Brontë brought Emily and her sister Charlotte home where he and Miss Branwell continued to educate them.

The four remaining siblings became a close-knit group, developing imaginary worlds that they began writing about. The four were separated when Charlotte attended Roe Head school in Mirfield. She later returned as a teacher there accompanied by Emily who went there as a pupil. After only three months Emily became so ill that she had to return home to be replaced at Roe Head by her sister Anne.

Divided from her sister Anne, with whom she was closest, Emily became more self-reliant and remained apart from the rest of her family. Much of her time was spent secretly writing poetry until she took the position of teacher at Law Hill girl's school near Halifax in 1838. She remained there for six months before another illness required that she return to Haworth.

Charlotte had the idea of setting up a school and persuaded their aunt to pay for her and Emily to attend a school in Brussels. Emily struggled through nine months of being the oldest pupil in a school where lessons were taught in French - a language she was not well versed in - before her father summoned her and Charlotte home because of the death of their aunt.

In 1845, Charlotte discovered one of Emily's poetry books, much to the annoyance of the younger sister. In spite of Emily's anger, the other Brontë children persuaded her to allow them to select poems to be submitted for publication along with other poems written by her sisters. A year later two girls published the collection called Poems pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Anne respectively).

Two years later, Emily, again under the name Ellis Bell, published the work for which she became famous: Wuthering Heights. This epic tale of the Earnshaws of Wuthering Heights and the Lintons of Thrushcross Grange confounded the critics of the day because of its innovative style. The publishers demanded that Emily contribute towards the publishing costs, even though they were using the Bell name to cash in on the success of Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte under the name Currer Bell.

The following year, Emily's brother Branwell died of tuberculosis - the symptoms of which had been masked by his alcoholism. At his funeral Emily contracted a cold that resulted in her own death on 18th December 1848. Following her death, Charlotte edited the two part Wuthering Heights into a single volume that was published under her real name.

The Project Gutenberg site hosts Poems and Wuthering Heights as well as other works by the Brontës.

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On this day in history: First edition of Encyclopædia Britannica published, 1768

Two Edinburgh businessmen, a bookseller and printer called Colin Macfarquhar and the engraver Andrew Bell, decided to publish a new encyclopaedia in response to the Encyclopédie edited by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert. They contracted a 28-year-old scholar called William Smellie to edit the publication, paying him £200. Smellie abridged and edited articles from other sources, producing longer articles of grouped subjects as well as the usual shorter articles. Bell produced engravings for the 160 illustrations and Macfarquhar printed the texts at his Nicolson Street premises.

On 6th December 1768, the first part of the Encyclopædia Britannica or, a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences compiled under a New Plan went on sale, credited to "A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland". It was the first of one-hundred thick quarto pamphlets costing sixpence each (or eight pence for a version on finer paper). The last part appeared in 1771, and later that same year the whole 2,391 page encyclopaedia went on sale bound in three collected volumes for £12 per set.

The venture proved to be a success although not without controversy. The midwifery section included illustrations of female pelvises and foetuses, which proved upsetting to some readers, notably King George III, who commanded that the offending pages be torn from every copy. Nevertheless, Macfarquhar and Bell decided to produce an expanded second edition in 1776, and the encyclopaedia continues to be published to this day, making it the oldest English-language encyclopaedia still in print.

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Samuel Johnson`s Dictionary published: 15th April 1755
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On this day in history: First appearance of Sweeney Todd, 1846

The 21st November 1846 issue of Edward Lloyd's 'penny dreadful' The People's Periodical and Family Library contained the first part serialised story entitled The String of Pearls: A Romance. The story, which was published in eighteen weekly editions, tells of the mysterious disappearance of a naval officer called Lieutenant Thornhill, who is last seen entering the Fleet Street premises of a barber called Sweeney Todd. Thornhill was in possession of the string of pearls from the title.

The pearls were a gift for a girl named Johanna Oakley from her lover, Mark Ingestrie, who is presumed lost at sea. She joins forces with Colonel Jeffery, a friend of Thornhill's, to investigate the disappearance of the two men. Eventually, they uncover the grisly facts: Todd is killing rich patrons of his shop for their valuables, while his partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett, disposes of the bodies by using them as filling for her pies.

The story may have been based on an infamous murder from 1784 (the year before the setting of the Sweeney Todd story). A journeyman barber was shaving a gentleman, told of the barber of his exploits with a young woman who lived nearby. The barber assumed that the woman in question was his wife and slit his throat from ear to ear.

While the author of the The String of Pearls remains anonymous, the work is generally attributed to Thomas Peckett Prest; although, it may have been the work of James Malcolm Rymer. Both men wrote 'penny dreadfuls' for Lloyd, and both may have wanted to protect their professional reputations as composer and civil engineer respectively.

The text of The String of Pearls is available at the Victorian London website.

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The Hobbit first published: 21st September 1937

On this day in history: The Hobbit first published, 1937

Some time in the early 1930s, the Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien was marking School Certificate papers when he found a blank sheet of paper. Suddenly inspired, he wrote the words: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." and returned to marking the papers. Over the next two years, Professor Tolkien drew on his love of mythology and his background as an scholar of Anglo-Saxon to write the story of a hobbit called Bilbo Baggins, who reluctantly joined Gandalf the wizard and a group of dwarves on their quest to find the treasure of a dragon called Smaug.

Tolkien wrote the story to entertain his three sons but he also let others read it, including the his fellow Oxford don, C. S. Lewis. On another occasion he lent a manuscript to Elaine Griffiths, a family friend and student of his. In 1936, Susan Dagnall, a member of staff at the publishers George Allen & Unwin, visited Griffiths who suggested that Dagnall read Tolkien's story.

Dagnall reacted so favourably to the tale that she showed it to her boss, Stanley Unwin. Unwin gave the book to his ten-year-old son Rayner, who he paid to write a review of it. Rayner wrote, "This book, with the help of maps, does not need any illustrations it is good and should appeal to all children between the ages of 5 and 9." This recommendation was enough for his father who decided to publish the book.

On 21st September 1937, George Allen & Unwin, Ltd published the first edition of The Hobbit with illustrations by Tolkien including those on the dust cover. The book was very well received, with all 1500 copies of the first print run selling by December. Translated into over forty languages, The Hobbit went on to become an international best-seller, as was its sequel The Lord of the Rings.

Read Anne T. Eaton's 1938 review of The Hobbit from the New York Times.

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