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Dictionaries in Spanish and English from 1554 to 1740: Their Structure and Development (review)

Professor Heberto Fernández’ work fills an important gap in the history of English and Spanish bilingual lexicography. There has been a need for a survey since Roger J. Steiner’s well-known and seminal book appeared forty years ago. Since then, there have been no comprehensive and detailed publications on the history of Spanish-English dictionaries of those two centuries, during which some of the most important lexicographical works appeared. Other studies have been published since 1970; however, they are not complete books and are mainly overviews published as journal articles or book chapters (such as that of Rizo Rodríguez and Salvador Valera; see References). In addition, facsimile editions of some early Spanish-English dictionaries, like John Minsheu’s A Dictionarie in Spanish and English (1599), were published with introductory essays. Other such editions are needed, and for them the work we are currently reviewing is essential. Professor Fernández’ book has a clear, uniform, and meticulous structure; this is evident from the beginning in its comprehensive and detailed table of contents. As the author himself mentions in the Introduction, he follows an inductive method, which is most appropriate for lexicographical analysis. To this end, he begins with a detailed analysis of each dictionary, and then establishes a comparison with previous works in order to develop a typology of dictionaries published from 1554 to 1740. Twelve works are analyzed, starting with the anonymous Book of English and Spanish (1554?), followed by such well-known authors as Minsheu and Captain John Stevens (1705), and ending with the excellent dictionary by Pedro Pineda (1740). The book covers general dictionaries, arranged alphabetically or thematically, but not specialized ones. Lists of words included in grammars are not studied because they do not serve any lexical purpose. The first chapters are of particular note as they include a section on the theory of lexicography and metalexicography, with an analysis of the key concepts required to understand this work, such as macrostructure, microstructure, nomenclature, etc. There is also a review of the criteria and 172 Reviews