I Heart Design

no. 77

THE CENTURY DICTIONARYFIRST ISSUED 1889–1891, FINAL EDITION 1914

SELECTED BYSCOTT-MARTIN KOSOFSKYPRINTED AND PUBLISHED BYTHEODORE LOW DE VINNEEDITED BYWILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY

It was an undertaking so enormous—eventually a half million entries, nearly 8,500 pages, and some 10,000 wood engravings—that its printer and publisher, Theodore Low De Vinne, had to quickly construct an extension at 21 to 23 East 4th Street to his already massive plant on Lafayette. Nothing was impossible in New York in 1889.

The project at hand was The Century Dictionary, a work that would forevermore set a standard for clear typography and seamless organization and establish America’s standing as a center of scholarship.

De Vinne (1828–1914), the preeminent American ...