Randle Cotgrave was born to a Cheshire family, and after studying at Cambridge became secretary to William Cecil, Lord Burghley (chief advisor to Elizabeth I). Cotgrave’s French-English dictionary was first published in 1611 and dedicated to Lord Burghley; this enlarged second edition following in 1632.

Cotgrave’s work featured words derived from a wide variety of sources, and several French dialects. The description of each word included not only the meaning, but more modern features such as the gender, and illustrative phrases; in the case of dialect words Cotgrave includes the part of France that the word derives from. For the period it was a remarkably careful and scholarly piece of lexicography, and is still of importance for students of the history of French today. This second edition also contains a short English-French dictionary, compiled by Robert Sherwood, followed by a short essay on the pronunciation of English for French speakers.