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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
James Buchanan was an eighteenth-century schoolmaster, grammarian, and maker of pronouncing dictionaries who played an important part in the contemporary movement to “fix” the English language. The significance of this movement is recognized in several recent books. The latter half of the century was more prolific than the earlier half. The third quarter in particular, the period of Buchanan's activity, produced many significant works, among which are Harris's Hermes, Johnson's Dictionary, Priestley's Rudiments, Lowth's Grammar, Karnes's Elements, Sheridan's Elocution, A. Campbell's anonymous Lexiphanes, Baker's Reflections, Kenrick's Dictionary, Buchanan's Essay, to name but a few of the books which illustrate pioneer tendencies.
1 S. A. Leonard, The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700–1800 (1929).
G. H. McKnight, Modern English in the Making (1928), Chap. xiv-xviii.
R. L. Lyman, The Teaching of English Grammar in American Schools before 1850 (1921), Chap. i-v.
W. F. Bryan, “Notes on the Founders of English Prescriptive Grammar,” Manly Anniversary Studies (1923).
2 My notes are based on a new edition of 1769, London, G. Keith et al.
3 Apparently a digest of the earlier dictionary; noticed in The Monthly Review, October, 1757, xvii, 376.
4 Thus listed in the British Museum Catalog. A volume in the New York Public Library is called the 5th edition, 1760. Based on Bailey's supplementary volume of 1727, an alleged pronouncing dictionary. Buchanan's additions are not original or significant.
5 See A. G. Kennedy, “Authorship of the British Grammar,” Mod. Lang. Notes, xli, (1926), 388–391. The edition I have used is the 2d, 1768, London, Millar.
6 Noticed in the Monthly Review for December, 1765, xxxiii, 492, 493. In the preface, p. vi, Buchanan says; “… there appeared last year … ‘A Spelling and Pronouncing dictionary’ …” This refers to Johnston's 1764, which was noticed in the Monthly Review for Nov. of that year. Perhaps Buchanan's Essay ought to be dated 1765.
7 So listed in A. G. Kennedy, A Bibliography of Writings on the English Language. My notes are from the 5th American edition, 1792, Philadelphia, Cist.
8 Perhaps Elizabeth, 1765–1839, who held the title in her own right but married George Granville Leveson Gower in 1785.
9 Dictionary, 1757, preface.
10 Dictionary, 1757; Essay, 1766; prefaces.
11 Plan, 1770; Scholar, 1753, preface.
12 Exetra quid quaerat, sua qui vernacula nescit?
13 Monthly Review, viii, 137–138; xvii, 82, 376; xxviii, 75–76; xxxiii, 492–193; xxxviii, 148; xliii, 154–155.
14 Monthly Review, xvii, 82.
15 H. C. Wyld, History of Modern Colloquial English, ch. v.
16 Grammar, 1762, Ch. vi, note 17.
17 A. Fisher and George Fisher are often referred to in catalogs as Mrs. Slack. The New English Tutor, 1778, and The Pleasing Instructor, American late edition, 1795, make definite references to A. Fisher, their author, as author of the Grammar “with Bad English”; but I have not found any such references in the books by George Fisher (“Accomptant”).
18 On re-spelling see:
T. R. Lounsbury, The Standard of Pronunciation in English (1904), p. 31.
Percy W. Long, “English Dictionaries before Webster,” Bibiliographical Society of America, Papers, iv (1909), 25–43.
