Specimen of an etymological dictionary

Saint Paul: Rulon-Miller Books, 1990. Edition ltd. to 100 copies (this, no. 32), 8vo, pp. 61, [3]; photographic facsimile tipped in, original green cloth, slipcase, paper label on spine. Printed by hand in red and black on handmade Umbria Bianco paper by Emily Mason Strayer of the Kutenai Press, South Willington, CT; designed and produced under the direction of Gerald Lange of the Bieler Press, at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles; matrices for unique characters were provided by Monotype International, Surrey, England; additional characters were supplied by MacKenzie-Harris Corp., San Francisco. Kemble (1807-1857), the son of Charles Kemble, the actor, was the foremost English philologist of his day, and a friend, correspondent, and protege of Jacob Grimm. The text is taken from the recently discovered eight-page manuscript dated 1830, compiled three years before the appearance of his influential edition of Beowulf--the first in English, and the first to show competent knowledge of Old English. No trace of the Dictionary itself is known. But, coming at in important juncture of English etymological research and Anglo-Saxon scholarship, this Specimen of select English words, traced back through centuries of Middle and Old English literature, is fitting tribute to Kemble's erudition and interest in the history of the English language.