Long before the dictionary of Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century, scholars attempted to write down the words of their languages to facilitate study. The earliest dictionaries and grammars appeared in the fifteenth century, primarily to aid in the study of classical texts, translating Greek into Latin and vice versa. Eventually, dictionaries started to appear that helped students translate from their mother tongues – mostly into Latin.

This is the second edition of John Baret’s Alvearie, a dictionary that translated English into Latin, French and Greek, the last of which was missing from his first edition. The strange name for the dictionary, another term for beehive, came about because many of the words and definitions were collected by Baret’s students at Cambridge and were brought back for him to compile. The beautifully-illustrated title page in this volume demonstrates this clearly, with a large beehive dominating the bottom half of the page.