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Sixth edition, "revised, corrected, and improved" by J[ohn] K[ersey], folio, engraved frontispiece (dated 1696, as usual), unpaged; A2 A-Z4 [aa]-[bb]4 2A-2L4 2M2 3A-3V4 4A-4O4 4P2 5A-5R4; some spotting and browning, full contemporary calf, unadorned spine in 7 compartments; lacking front free endpaper; contemporary ownership signatures of various Hoppers (Joseph, Nancy, Moly, etc.) on frontispiece verso and rear endpapers, modern bookplate of Graham Pollard on front pastedown; some soiling to [3H4] verso affecting a few words with loss of sense. Phillips was Milton's nephew, and the first edition (1658) was the first dictionary in folio format. Four years prior to this edition, the editor, Kersey, had issued his own A New English Dictionary, and this sixth edition of Phillips' work was considered the best to date with the inclusion of many new entries - so many, in fact, that this is considered an entirely new work, "a universal dictionary, so intelligently planned and executed as to constitute a distinguished performance and a worthy forerunner of Johnson. The most significant change is undoubtedly the abandonment of the "poetical fictions" and the substitution of a whole new scientific and technical vocabulary. Thus, at a single stroke the large collection of classical and medieval legends which had been carelessly copied and alternately expanded and abridged for some fifty years was cast out to be replaced by a body of new learning, partly the live result of new research and partly the most authoritative theories of recent writers." (Starnes & Noyes, p. 84ff). Alston V, 61; Kennedy 6200; Vancil, p. 191.
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