J. Redding Ware
A Dictionary of Victorian Slang and Phrase
PDR Minis #002
In 1909, after decades collecting clippings of linguistic curiosities, James Redding Ware published Passing English of the Victorian Era: A Dictionary of Heterodox English, Slang, and Phrase — one of the most characterful reference works in the English language. Joyce drew on it when writing Ulysses; the OED cites it over 150 times.
This abridged edition distils the liveliest of Ware’s 4,000-plus entries, steered by his own wish that no entry be “quite too dull”. Even reduced, a world exhales from these pages. And much of it laced with alcohol: the book is awash with terms for drink and drunkenness. Petty crime also plays its part, as does casual insult and flirtation, food, the music hall, anxieties of class, and the continual need to name things briskly in a crowded city. The Victorian world in its own unruly voice.
About PDR Press:
PDR Press is the publishing imprint of The Public Domain Review. We bring the same care and attention that drives the journal to every book we publish — giving new form to out-of-copyright texts and images through imaginative curation, editing, and design.
PDR Press Minis are pocket-sized editions of public domain texts: carefully curated, beautifully produced, and deliberately eclectic. Complete works and excerpts — stories, ideas, poems, miscellanies — from ancient curiosities through Victorian oddities to modernist rarities, each with an introductory note from our editors.
Look inside
Preview courtesy of Penguin Random House
More About This Book
A Dictionary of Victorian Slang and Phrase
ISBN 9781911292036
Published by PDR Press
Publication date
Page count 86
Dimensions 4.5" x 6.5" x 0.25"
Format Trade paperback
Subjects
A Dictionary of Victorian Slang and Phrase
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