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Hardly Harmless Drudgery: Landmarks in English Lexicography
July 23 @ 6:00 pm EDT
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Join us for a Virtual Tour and Curator Q&A
Join the Grolier Club for a pre-recorded video walk-through of the “Hardly Harmless Drudgery” exhibition followed by a live Q&A via Zoom with the show’s co-curators, Bryan Garner and Jack Lynch. This public exhibition is on view at the Grolier Club through July 27, 2024.
About this Exhibition
Samuel Johnson, creator of the first great English dictionary, wickedly mocked his own trade when he defined lexicographer as “A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.” But dictionaries are serious business, and the people who drudge away at them are anything but harmless. Co-curated by Grolier Club members Bryan A. Garner (Distinguished Research Professor of Law at Southern Methodist University) and Jack Lynch (Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University), Hardly Harmless Drudgery traces the history of English-language lexicography from its origins to its digital present in some 100 objects, from early printed books to CD-ROMs. Highlights include important dictionaries and manuscripts—mostly from Garner’s collection—including items from Johnson, Noah Webster, and the Oxford English Dictionary, as well as portraits, advertisements, lexicographic ephemera, and letters. An accompanying monograph from Godine was published in March 2024.