This book provides a survey of dictionaries of slang and cant (the language of thieves and beggars) in the period 1859-1936. It covers Britain, American, Australia, India, and other countries then part of the British Empire. Dictionaries by Hotten and Farmer and Henley are covered in particular detail. By the end of the period, war, the Depression, and prohibition all played a vital role in determining what type of dictionaries were being produced.
|Print publication date: 2008||Print ISBN-13: 9780199549375|
|Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2009||DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199549375.001.0001|