Editing Nathan Bailey (section)

==Works==
Bailey, with [[John Kersey the younger]], was a pioneer of English lexicography, and changed the scope of dictionaries of the language. Greater comprehensivity became the common ambition. Up to the early eighteenth century, English dictionaries had generally focused on "hard words" and their explanation, for example those of [[Thomas Blount (lexicographer)|Thomas Blount]] and [[Edward Phillips]] in the generation before. With a change of attention, to include more commonplace words and those not of direct interest to scholars, the number of [[headword]]s in English dictionaries increased spectacularly.<ref>Green, p. 226.</ref> Innovations were in the areas of common words, dialect, technical terms, and vulgarities.<ref name = ODNB/> [[Thomas Chatterton]], the literary forger, also obtained many sham-antique words from reading Bailey and Kersey.<ref name=DNB>{{cite DNB|wstitle=Bailey, Nathan}}</ref>

Bailey's ''[[An Universal Etymological English Dictionary]]'', from its publication in 1721, became the most popular English dictionary of the 18th century, and went through nearly thirty editions.<ref name=DNB/> It was a successor to Kersey's ''[[A New English Dictionary]]'' (1702), and drew on it. A supplementary volume of his dictionary appeared in 1727, and in 1730 a folio edition, the ''[[Dictionarium Britannicum]]''<ref>'Dictionarium Britannicum, collected by several hands. The Mathematical part by G. Gordon, the Botanical by P. Miller. The whole revis'd and improv'd with many thousand additions by N. Bailey.'</ref> containing many technical terms.<ref name=DNB/> Bailey had collaborators, for example [[John Martyn (botanist)|John Martyn]] who worked on botanical terms in 1725.<ref>''[[Dictionary of National Biography]]'', Martyn, John (1699–1768), botanist, by G. S. Boulger. Published 1893.</ref>

[[Samuel Johnson]] made an interleaved copy the foundation of his own ''[[Johnson's Dictionary]]''.<ref name=DNB/> The 1755 edition of Bailey's dictionary bore the name of [[Joseph Nicol Scott]] also; it was published years after Bailey's death, but months only after Johnson's dictionary appeared. Now often known as the "Scott-Bailey" or "Bailey-Scott" dictionary, it contained relatively slight revisions by Scott, but massive [[plagiarism]] from Johnson's work. A twentieth-century lexicographer, [[Philip Babcock Gove]], attacked it retrospectively on those grounds.<ref>Green, p. 235.</ref> In all, thirty editions of the dictionary appeared, the last at Glasgow in 1802, in reprints and versions by different booksellers.<ref name=DNB/>

Bailey's dictionary was also the basis of English-German dictionaries. These included those edited by [[Theodor Arnold]] (3rd edition, 1761), [[Anton Ernst Klausing]] (8th edition, 1792), and [[Johann Anton Fahrenkrüger]] (11th edition, 1810).<ref name=DNB/>

Bailey also published a spelling-book in 1726; ''All the Familiar Colloquies of Erasmus Translated'' (1733), of which a new edition appeared in 1878;<ref>Desiderius Erasmus, ''[https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1854 The Colloquies of Erasmus]'', trans. by Nathan Bailey, ed. by E. Johnson, 2 vols (London: Reeves and Turner, 1878).</ref> 'The Antiquities of London and Westminster,' 1726; 'Dictionarium Domesticum,' 1736 (which was also a cookbook on recipes, including [[fried chicken]]<ref>{{cite news |last=Pereira |first=Alyssa |date=22 June 2016 |url=http://www.sfgate.com/food/article/The-internet-is-losing-it-over-this-18th-century-8318975.php |title=The internet is obsessing over this 18th century fried chicken recipe |newspaper=[[San Francisco Chronicle]] |access-date=23 June 2016}}</ref>); Selections from Ovid and Phædrus; and 'English and Latin Exercises.' In 1883 appeared 'English Dialect Words of the Eighteenth Century as shown in the . . . Dictionary of N. Bailey', with an introduction by [[W. E. A. Axon]] (English Dialect Society), giving biographical and bibliographical details.<ref name=DNB/>