MELLEMA, Edouard Leon.

by Edouard Leon Mellema

£2,250 · Offered by Sokol Books

A very good copy of the scarce first edition in Dutch of this popular Dutch-French dictionary. It was edited by the Frisian Edouard Leon Mellema (c.1552-22), schoolmaster in Haarlem and author of Arithmetica (1586). This edition (with Dutch being here interchangeable with Flemish) is in fact a posthumous reissue, with Dutch t-p and preliminaries, of the first 1587 French edition printed by Jan van Waesberghe s father in Antwerp as Dictionnaire ou Promptuaire Flamand-Français . The French-Flemish (or French-Dutch) volumes were published separately. The work comprises French translations spanning basic adjectives, verbs and pronouns, and phrases, Netherlandish and French place names, kinds of oxen, measurements, and thousands of words useful for everyday life. His dictionary became a reference work and went through 11 editions in the C17. here, the word woordn-boec [dictionary] appeared in a dictionary for the first time (Sterkenburg, 38). It provided the basis of Hexham s Dutch-English dictionary of 1648.

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.