The history of the Oxford English Dictionary (continued)

part 9 of 10

The First Edition 1857 - 1928 (continued)

V

Although two editors and their staffs had been working separately from 1888, it was still considered by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press that the rate of progress ought to be increased, and it was clear that this could only be done by the appointment of a third editor. With this in view, William Alexander Craigie, then a lecturer at the University of St Andrews, was invited to Oxford in the summer of 1897, and after assisting Dr Bradley with the letter G, and Dr Murray with I and K, began separate editing with Q in 1901. From that date two sections of the Dictionary had their home in the Old Ashmolean Building in Broad Street, which had been left vacant by the removal of the Museum some years before. To these a third was added in 1914, when Charles Talbut Onions, who had at Dr Murray's invitation joined the staff in 1895, and had between 1906 and 1913 prepared special portions of M, N, R, and S, began with a separate staff to edit the later portion of that letter (Su-Sz).

With four editors and their staffs concurrently at work prospects for an early conclusion to the whole seemed brighter than they had ever been since the full magnitude of the undertaking became apparent. Unfortunately it was not long before various events began to mar these prospects, and bring unwelcome delays. The outbreak of the Great War soon began to reduce the staffs by withdrawing from them their younger members, and in time even some of those more mature in years. The loss of these trained workers for three or four years was naturally a serious handicap for those that remained. The next severe blow was the death of Sir James Murray (he had been knighted in 1908) on 26 July 1915, after more than thirty-eight years of connection with the Dictionary and thirty-three during which he had supplied copy to the printer without intermission. The transference of his staff to the Old Ashmolean, or to quarters near it, helped greatly to strengthen the three remaining sections, but there was no possibility of compensating for the loss that the work had sustained. If his wish had been fulfilled to the extent of seeing his eightieth birthday in 1917, it would not have coincided with the end of the Dictionary, as he has hoped, but those two years would have brought the completion of the work appreciably nearer in spite of the difficulties of the time.

With the end of the war, some of the assistants returned to their posts, and for some four years the work went on steadily (although the two younger editors were not continuously engaged on it nor able to give their whole time to it), until the death of Dr Bradley on 23 May 1923 removed another of its mainstays. By that time it was clearly too late to think of finding another editor; the best that could be done was to make full use of the more experienced assistants in the preparation of special sections of the letters that still remained. By this means it was possible for Dr Craigie, in spite of his removal to the University of Chicago in 1925, to take part with Dr Onions in the editing of W, and so enable the work to be finished in the beginning of 1928, almost exactly seventy years from the date on which the Philological Society had decided to make 'a completely new English Dictionary'.

With work on three or four letters going on simultaneously, and publication of each taking place as soon as the sections were ready, the sequence of the various parts of the Dictionary became more irregular after 1900, as will be seen from the following table:

The total number of pages in the first edition was 15,487; of these no less than 7,207, or nearly half of the entire work were edited by Sir James Murray.

The early volumes of the Dictionary were as a rule published in parts of 352 pages at a price of twelve shillings and sixpence each, with three smaller sections introduced to make the divisions coincide with the end of the letters B, C, and E. The size of these parts necessarily involved a considerable time in the preparation of each, and a corresponding interval between the dates of publication. Towards the end of 1894 it was decided that a shortening of these intervals was desirable, and the new arrangement explained in the following announcement was adopted.

This expectation was realized, and quarterly sections of 64 pages, or double sections of 128 (occasionally even a triple section of 192) were steadily issued for the next twenty years, until the reduction of staffs caused by the war, and other losses, made it impossible to continue with the same regularity. For the convenience of those who preferred them, however, the larger twelve-and-sixpenny parts were still issued whenever a sufficient number of consecutive single or double sections were available to make one.

At the time this change was made, a new name for the Dictionary was also introduced, though no change was made on the title-page. On the cover of the section containing Deceit to Deject, published on 1 January 1895, above the title, appeared for the first time the designation 'The Oxford English Dictionary', which was repeated on every section and part issued after 1 July of that year. The new name, being more distinctive than the old, steadily came more and more into use, and the abbreviation OED tended to supplant NED, although the latter was frequently employed for many years. A third abbreviation, HED (with H for Historical), though employed for a number of years in Notes and Queries, never attained general currency. Popularly the work was often referred to as Murray's, and the Philological Society by a natural tradition has continued to call it 'the Society's Dictionary'.

part 9 of 10