The First Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary

The OED, as it is called, "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles," is a large, complex dictionary that attempts not only to define all words in English in all their senses but also to provide examples of their usage from print sources (with their dates of publication). The OED, clearly, is a wonderful way to study the histories of words and the words in old or ancient texts. Raymond Williams's Keywords constructs histories of a number of very interesting words, including art, civilization, culture, ethnic, fiction, history, imperialism, mechanical, nature, originality, private, racial, science, technology, and unconscious. Owen Barfield's History in English Words does something similar.

The OED is not an "objective" history of the words in it, however, and neither can be any histories built upon it. The sources used by the people collecting the words and examples of their uses -- the sources themselves reflect late-Victorian biases in what was valuable to read and reinforces the works that were canonical at that time. Not all English words are in there: some of the jucier common words do not appear until the Supplement or the Second Edition, reflecting, again, the biases of the writers and editors. Furthermore, senses that Victorians would have considered indecent -- senses of words that otherwise appear -- also are not always represented. (For a couple of examples of this, see my brief discussion of tit in Titipu.)

Even though the Second Edition lays a structure of examples -- and sources for the example -- over the first and may thus be considered more contemporary to our time, I use the First Edition here as a way of reflecting not only the senses (or meanings) of the words as Gilbert and his audience mnight have known them, but their familiar (and canonical) contexts and sources as well.

Our Libretto

changes to the text

The libretto we use is posted as the libretto in this website, so it is not the libretto used in the premiere performances, nor the libretti sanctioned, or not, in the last century by Gilbert or D'Oyly Carte or the Savoy. Our libretto reflects topical interests and our discomfort with some of the ethnic and racial bigotry as well as our sense of a need to preserve the essence of what people have loved and remembered in this operetta.

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