With sales of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED) exceeding all expectations, royalties are to be used to fund new scholarships.

Publication of the Historical Thesaurus last year led to an almost instant sell-out, speedy reprinting, and the beginning of a flow of royalties into the University of Glasgow.

Following a longstanding agreement among members of the HTOED editorial team, these royalties will be devoted to furthering research in English Language through the establishment of a scholarship fund. The scholarships will offer exceptional students from any university the opportunity to pursue research in any of the subject areas, both historical and modern, covered by the Department of English Language, and will take the form of a fee waiver for the first year of research.

On current predictions of future royalties - including the US where it swiftly sold out and is now into its third printing - the Department expects to be able to offer up to four scholarships a year, starting in 2010-11.

The scholarships will be named in honour of the four editors of HTOED: Christian Kay, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels and Irené Wotherspoon. The Department also plans to run an annual research event featuring a leading figure in English Language studies.

The world’s first historical thesaurus in any language, The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary was published - after 45 years of painstaking scholarship by the English Language department of the University of Glasgow - on 22 October 2009 to universal acclaim.

The brainchild of Professor Michael Samuels in 1964, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary is the culmination of thousands of hours work by hundreds of research assistants, postgraduate students, university staff and volunteers.

The awe-inspiring completed work contains nearly 800,000 meanings, organised into more than 236,000 categories and subcategories collected together in 4,500 pages in two volumes.

Randolph Quirk, Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature, University College London said: “This book is a magnificent achievement of quite extraordinary value. It is perhaps the single most significant tool ever devised for investigating semantic, social and intellectual history.”

Further information:
Martin Shannon, Senior Media Relations Officer
University of Glasgow Tel: 0141 330 8593

Juliet Evans, Publicity Manager
Oxford University Press Tel: 01865 353911
Email: juliet.evans@oup.com

Oxford University Press
www.oxfordonline.com/ht

First published: 4 February 2010

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