September 2002 newsletter

Exactly 100 years ago, Oxford University Press approached the scholar William Little about the possibility of preparing an abridged version of the OED. When the Shorter OED eventually appeared in 1933, the editorship had passed to C. T. Onions, the fourth of the OED's chief editors, who had been assisted by two of the longest-serving members of the OED's staff. Interchange of staff between the OED and the SOED has continued down to the present, and it is a pleasure to include here an article by the most recent arrival, Catherine Bailey, on the preparation of the new Fifth Edition of the Shorter (whose chief editor, Bill Trumble, also rejoined the OED team recently).

The other contributions to this issue offer two differing perspectives on the interaction between lexicography and poetry. It must be relatively unusual to find two published poets among one's colleagues; but Giles Goodland and Jane Griffiths are not the first to combine the two interests. There have been poets on the staff of the OED before - and perhaps the most distinguished precedent of all is that of Samuel Johnson, who, writing of his lexicographical aspirations in the Preface to his 1755 Dictionary, described them as "the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer".

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