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Second edition, pp. lvi, 471, [1]; modern green cloth rebinding with gilt lettering; marbled edges; front and rear flyleaves reinforced in blank margins with archival tissue; signature on title page dated 1850, additional contemporary inscriptions on front flyleaf; pencil bibliographic notes on rear flyleaf; generally fine in a new binding. Bookplate of James Mead, Curator Emeritus of Marine Mammals at the Smithsonian. First published in Paris in 1768. John O Brien (d.1767), lexicographer, was born in Ballyvoddy, near Glanworth, County Cork. From 1733 to 1737 he travelled widely in France and Spain as tutor to the sons of several aristocratic Irish expatriates, namely Simon Connock, governor in the Spanish service; Thomas Fitzgerald, the Spanish ambassador in London; and Arthur Dillon, lieutenant-general in the Irish brigade. His great work was as general editor of an Irish dictionary, Focalóir Gaoidhilge Sax-Bhéarla, or, An Irish English Dictionary, compiled by other scholars under his supervision before 1762, and eventually printed at Paris in 1768. This was intended to help the church, for O Brien believed that the preservation of the faith in Ireland depended essentially on the preservation of the native language. Inspired by the works of Edward Lluyd and Conor O Begly, he drew on earlier compilations but omitted several thousand words then in use. His dictionary contains valuable historical and genealogical information and useful definitions, but is marred by fanciful etymologies and a lack of grammatical detail, which are fixed, to some degree, in this "revised and corrected" edition. Partly because of ill health and partly to escape the powerful Nagle family, protectors of a dissolute priest accused of using the confessional to seduce female tenants of the Nagles, O Brien left Ireland forever in the summer of 1767. Having first made his way to Paris to oversee the printing of his dictionary in 1768, he died the following year at Lyons, where he was buried in the church of St Martin d Ainay. This second edition includes a preface by the editor Robert Daly (1783-1872), who served as the Church of Ireland bishop of Cashel from 1843 until his death. Daly insisted on the use of traditional Gaelic type rather than the romanization employed in the first edition. He hoped this revised edition would invigorate Irish-language scholarship, stating in his preface, "I ardently desire the intellectual and spiritual culture of the natives of my country, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who speak the Irish language." See Alston XIV, 49; not in Vancil.
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