Recently, a number of reference works pertaining to 18th-century philology and lexicography have appeared, including volume 7 of this ongoing handbook of 18th-century linguists. Volume 1 was published in 1992, with subsequent volumes appearing every year or so. This most recent volume contains bio-bibliographies for approximately 200 individuals, as well as brief information about an additional 50. The coverage is rather uneven, with some figures of secondary importance receiving more pages than more prominent ones. Not all of the material belongs in the realm of language scholarship--for example, a lengthy article about Viennese professor Johann Siegmund Popowitsch includes a detailed summary of his study about the sea. Perhaps it would take less time to conclude the BBHS if the authors would adhere more strictly to their main subject area. On the whole, the work amasses a great deal of factual and biographical information without providing a means to gaining an overview of the subject material. It remains to be seen whether the index to the completed work will provide a fruitful means of using the assembled information and enable users to pursue research in this field beyond the biographical. [sh/akb]

Volume 6 of Konrad Schröder's biographical lexicon of teachers, containing addenda to the previous volume covering the second half of the alphabet, as well as to the bibliography and to other addenda, was planned for 1966, but was actually not issued until May 2001 together with the separate index volume, bringing the set up to date through 1998. The index volume covers (1) names of the language teachers, with references from variant name forms; (2) places, in German, with references from foreign name forms; and (3) languages (excluding German).

The second work under review, by the same author, is the first volume of a bibliography covering the teaching of the less common languages for the same approximate time span, 1500 to 1800. The volume, with 347 entries, is divided into sections according to the different languages listed in the title; in each, the entries are alphabetical by author. Included are, among other things, grammars, textbooks, conversation books, and dictionaries. Quality and detail of the entries vary greatly, for they are taken from very different sources; some come from existing bibliographies, some are actual library catalog records; nearly all lack pagination. Each language section begins with lists of "background studies," i.e., secondary literature from the time of coverage as well as from recent research. Since dictionaries are one of the listed categories, one would have expected to find references to Franz Joseph Hausmann's seminal work on lexicography, Wörterbücher: ein internationales Handbuch zur Lexikographie (Berlin, 1989-1991). The volume includes indexes of authors, places of publication, printers and publishers. [sh/hh]

Research on dictionaries has been impeded by a lack of access to the primary resources--the dictionaries themselves. Fortunately, bibliographic coverage has been provided for the 18th century by the Bio-bibliographisches Handbuch zur Sprachwissenschaft des 18. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 1992- ), and for the 16th century by Frans Claes's Bibliographisches Verzeichnis der deutschen Vokabulare und Wörterbücher, gedruckt bis 1600 (Hildesheim, 1977). The gap for the 17th century has now been closed by W.J. Jones with his bibliography German Lexicography in the European Context, which does not suffer in comparison with the other two.

Thorough preparations, that included visiting or at least contacting no fewer than 702 libraries, enabled Jones to list 1,150 dictionaries in their various editions. He personally inspected 64 per cent of these, received photographic reproductions of another 21 percent, and utilized other sources for about five percent. Ten percent of the titles are known only from the secondary literature, with no extant copies available. The surprisingly large number of entries is due to the fact that not only dictionaries in the strictest sense of the word are included, but also books that contain "word lists." An example of the latter is Giuseppe Miselli's handbook for travelers, Il burattino veridico, containing useful words and phrases in six languages. Published first in 1682, it continued to appear until 1699 in various editions, including a German one: Der wahrhaffte Burattin: gründlicher Unterricht vor Reisende in Europa [The True Burattin: Thorough Instruction for Travelers in Europe] (Leipzig, 1687).

The bibliography is made up of two sections: Anonymous Works (Nr. 1-177) and Works by Individual Authors (Nr. 178-1,150). The bibliographical descriptions leave nothing to be desired, and include annotations on the contents of the work and other information, with citations to secondary literature. Reprints and microfiche editions are noted. In addition to a title index the volume contains indexes for technical terms and languages other than German (except Latin, which appears in almost all of the dictionaries); for types of dictionaries; and for publishers and printers. An additional index of countries and places of publication would have been useful.

Aside from its value for the field of dictionary research, this exemplary bibliography represents a solid contribution to bibliographic control of publications from the 17th century. One hopes that the author will be able to fulfill his promise of an accompanying volume with facsimiles of title pages and "fingerprints." The announced (p. xix) Internet version of the bibliography would be of lesser interest. [sh/nb]

This second edition of a 1975 reference work about German dictionaries of the 17th and 18th centuries is only a slightly expanded reprint of the earlier work. The additions consist primarily of a brief preface to the second edition and a 34-page article about the historian Georg Henisch and his dictionary, Teütsche Sprach vnd Weißheit (1616). The bibliographical portions of the articles, with lists of titles reprinted virtually unchanged from the 1975 edition--as if nothing had happened in research on historical lexicography in thirty years--are completely inadequate and outdated. By comparison, one would do better to consult three superior works dealing with this subject: the Biographisches und bibliographisches Lexikon der Fremdsprachenlehrer des deutschsprachigen Raumes, Spätmittelalter bis 1800 (see RREA 7:77 above), the Bio-bibliographisches Handbuch zur Sprachwissenschaft des 18. Jahrhunderts (see RREA 7:76 above), and German Lexicography in the European Context: a Descriptive Bibliography of Printed Dictionaries and Word Lists Containing German Language (1600-1700) (see RREA 7:79 above). Libraries that own the 1975 edition of the Deutsche Wörterbücher will gain little by acquiring the new edition. [sh/akb]