Towards an understanding of Joseph Wright’s sources

This paper builds on previous research into the making of the English Dialect Dictionary (1898–1905): Thompson (2008), Markus (2009) and Beal (2010), among others. It evaluates the contribution of Bishop White Kennett’s glossary to Parochial Antiquities (1695) to Joseph Wright’s dictionary. By applying quantitative methods of analysis, my main aim is to ascertain the proportion of words that were illustrated by means of Kennett’s data, and to assess the treatment that Wright gave to this information. In so doing, hope that this paper may cast some light on the documentary structure of the dictionary, and contribute to our understanding of the documents that were taken as testimonies to Late Modern English (LModE) dialects.