Wordsmith: How I Made My Dictionary. This item is unavailable.Wordsmith: How I Made My Dictionary

Writer, physician, philosopher and lexicographer ?mile Littr? was commissioned by Hachette in 1841 to compile 'A New Etymological Dictionary of the French Language'. The work, finally started in 1845, took nearly 30 years to complete, during which period France went through a great deal of turbulence. Littr? wrote this companion volume, a remarkable novella-length essay, Comment j'ai fait mon dictionnaire (How I Made My Dictionary), in 1880, which was translated and published for the first time in English in 1998 by a former Indian diplomat. This translation, now brought back into print by Hachette India, has been commended for its accuracy by Dictionaries, a journal of The Dictionary Society of North America, who described his ?translation as 'accurate and conveying the original's lively, intense effect...' This little book is a vital philological addition to the study of words and language and an insight into the wonderful men who made that study possible by embarking on such epic ventures.

Emile Littre (1 February 1801-2 June 1881) was a French lexicographer and philosopher, born in Paris and best known for his Dictionnaire de la Langue Fran?aise, commonly known as 'The Littr?'. Littr? started work on his great Dictionnaire de la langue Fran?aise in 1844, but it took him 30 years to finish it. In between, he participated in the July 1848 revolution, and in the repression of the extreme Republican Party in June 1849. Littr? published Comment j'ai fait mon dictionnaire in 1880, just a year before his death.