The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To DR JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER,1 [?1860]

Extract in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. XVIII, 1880-81, p. 173, “Memoir of J. E. Worcester, LL.D. by William Newell”. Date: written on receipt of a copy of Worcester’s Dictionary of the English Language, published 1860.

It is a remarkable work,2 of which America will be justly proud, and for which all who study the English language will long have reason to respect your name, and to be grateful to you. Accept my congratulations on the achievement of this laborious work, together with my best wishes for a speedy and enduring return in profit and honor.

• 1. Joseph Emerson Worcester (1784-1865; Dictionary of American Biography), American textbook writer and lexicographer. Graduate of Yale; honorary doctorates, Brown College (1847) and Dartmouth College (1856). Produced editions of Johnson’s and Webster’s dictionaries, before his own dictionary (below).
• 2. Dictionary of the English Language, Etymological and Pronouncing..., 1860. For CD’s copy, in his library at its sale, 1878, inscribed “Charles Dickens, Esq., with the respects of J. E. Worcester”, see J. H. Stonehouse (ed.), Catalogue of the Library of CD, 1935. Other British recipients included Carlyle and Thackeray.