Lexicography as a Mirror of Society: Women in John Kersey’s Dictionaries of the English Language

This paper investigates the representation of women in A New English Dictionary (1702 and 1713 editions) and Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (1708), respectively the first English universal general-purpose and abridged dictionaries, both of them compiled by John Kersey. The words used to refer to ‘all things women’ in the English language, as they are selected and lexicographically described by Kersey, are analysed in order to provide evidence of the nature of dictionaries as cultural objects and the role played by lexicographers as propagators of the shared values and ideology of their age and society.