8vo. xxiv, 194pp, [2]. Original publisher's gilt-tooled vellum, with contrasting red stained faux lettering-piece to spine, A.E.R. Rubbed and marked, with some soiling to boards. Bookplate of Thomas Gaisford to FEP. Light spotting and browning to initial and terminal leaves.

The first edition of a 'dictionary' of English provincialisms by Dorset poet William Holloway (1761-1854), who included Dorset dialect within his poetry, mostly rural elegies, though he is far less known than either Barnes or Hardy. Holloway first produced a great deal of rural and pastoral poetry at a young age, facilitated by his employer, print-shop owner John Love. Whilst working as a clerk for the East India Company, he published his most significant poetic works: The Rustic Farewell: a Fragment in the Dorset Dialect, The Peasants Fate (1802, reprinted four times), and Scenes of Youth.

This volume, written after his retirement to Hackney in 1821, is considerably less concerned with the Dorsetshire vernacular than one would expect, and instead explores the historical derivations of the English language, with attention paid to the Latin, Danish, Saxon, Celtic and Germanic influences on English etymology and culture.

COPAC records just three copies in the UK (Cambridge, Kent and Ushaw); OCLC adds numerous overseas.

Provenance: Thomas Gaisford (1789-1855), English classical scholar, sometime Curator of the Bodleian Library, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, and Dean of Christ Church.