Rare first suppressed edition of Lentzner's "rich and racy" collection of 19th-century British Colonial slang, the first to focus on Australia, swiftly withdrawn and re-issued to evade copyright violation claims and consequently rare.
Very good.
Price: $1,500.00
"The adult male of the Great Kangaroo is popularly called the 'Old Man' or BOOMER."
Lentzner, a German-born teacher of modern languages at Sydney Grammar School, claimed as research background for this work his "long residence in New South Wales and Victoria." COLONIAL ENGLISH is divided into five main sections on Australian, Anglo-Indian, Chinese Pidgin, West Indian, and South African words, followed by non-alphabetized addenda, an additional word list contributed by Professor Sattler of Bremen, and a hodge-podge appendix of articles on Australian life and literature, Native place-names, English jargon encountered in New Caledonia, still more specimens of English peculiar to Australia, India, Yokohama, Kameroon, and the United States, and a final word on the Destiny of the English Language.
The Australian material takes up a large proportion of the book, and is of great historical interest if not great originality: Lentzner acknowledged in the preface having "freely drawn" on the work of Douglas Sladen and Barrère and Leland, his own contribution therefore being better viewed as that of compiler. However, the copying was too free for the London-based publisher's comfort and the work was withdrawn with great haste, only to be re-issued the following year (1892) in Germany, where copyright laws were more lax (and with a new English title, but identical text). Baker cites COLONIAL ENGLISH as the first recorded use of many words, and even Robertson's stricter evaluation admits that borrowed sources have undergone reorganization and "some editing." A rare work, we trace only one (rebound) copy at auction.
Read more: Robertson, Australian Lexicography; Baker, The Australian Language; Ferguson, Bibliography of Australia, 11578.
First printing. Halle-Leipzig / London: Ehrhardt Karras / Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1891. German title: Wörterbuch der Englischen Volkssprache Australiens und einiger Englischen Mischsprachen. 10'' x 6.5''. Original printed wrappers. Cover text, half-title, and title page in German, followed by title page and full text in English. xiv, 237, [3] pages. Pages unopened. Some soil, rubbing to wrappers, especially at joints; light edgewear, staining. Overall, sound.
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