Conferences and the books that derive from them are, like dictionaries, the product of hard work, organization, selectivity and compromise. The convener/editor must locate his/her enterprise somewhere along the spectrum from tour d'horizon to (unachievable) totality. The present volume had its origin in a one-day meeting in Oxford in June 2009: seven chapters originated as papers delivered on the day; a further two were subsequently added. The result is a pleasing and timely contribution to the study of classical lexicography and the developing use of Greek lexica and Latin dictionaries (yes; those interested in Lemprière and his epigoni should look elsewhere), almost exclusively from an Anglophone and British viewpoint.

Stray in his Introduction maps out the territory — case studies of the treatment of individual words, the nature of lexica as cultural enterprises, the human stories of their makers, tensions between scholarly accuracy and the practicalities of publishing, and the way such books are used by their readers. There follow four chapters on different types of dictionary, three on the stories (past and possibly future) of two central and much-used works, LSJ and OLD, and two on dictionaries currently being compiled.

Eleanor Dickey begins, with a very well-organized and clearly expressed chapter on ‘Greek Dictionaries Ancient and Modern’. Having reviewed the basic characteristics and various types (monolingual/bilingual, author-specific/topic-specific, etymological, etc.), she concludes that we might do well to emulate the ancients in producing dictionaries which are less bulky and expensive by omitting common or unproblematical words. Joshua Katz (ch. 2) then makes an entertainingly provocative argument for more (and more) etymological dictionaries. His substantial endnotes at times reveal a vista of turf wars (an article by X is ‘typically under-argued, under-referenced, and difficult to understand’, 39), but the touch in the main text is lighter; as an illustration of semantic change we are reminded of Dean Farrer's description of St Paul as ‘this audacious pervert’ (31). Then Graham Whitaker, reviewing the modern history of the single-author lexicon (ch. 3), considers who compiled them, how they went about their work, and how their works were published and used. He points up the ‘chasm’ (52) between the English and German traditions and in passing observes soberly that ‘in general, it is inadvisable to undertake a new lexicographical work late in life’ (54). In ch. 4, David Butterfield provides a scholarly review of the publication history of the Gradus in its various forms. As he himself acknowledges, there is more that could be said about the cultural choices of editors and about the tastes and aims of educated society within Europe between the mid-seventeenth and late nineteenth centuries, but he does point, for example, to the reservations felt in England towards the over-easy use of the Gradus, not only by dull or lazy schoolboys, but by poets, for whom it became ‘synonymous with a convenient epithetary’ (84).

S.'s own contribution, ‘Liddell and Scott: Myths and Markets’ (ch. 5), is a typically thorough and engaging piece of cultural history from one who has already done so much to record the place of Classics in British education and society over the past two centuries. He notes that lexicographical collaboration was unusual when Liddell and Scott were at work and speculates that they may have embarked on their project partially as an escape from the ‘currently controversial realm of theology’ (101). It is remarkable that their lexicon went through eight editions in Liddell's lifetime, selling some 80,000 copies, and that their friendship ‘survived even the acid test of division of profits’ (100). S. carries the story through to the ninth edition; John A. L. Lee then (ch. 6) considers how to ‘releas[e] Liddell-Scott-Jones from its past’. For him it is a no-brainer that what is needed is an electronic data base, from which printed books might be created to meet the requirements of different types of user. He details the various categories for such a database (from ‘main entry’ via ‘syntagmatics’ to ‘secondary literature’); the tone throughout is upbeat. No whisper here of the problems which have beset the production of vast and complex databases in other spheres.

We then come to ‘A1-ZYTHUM: DOMIMINA NUSTIO ILLUMEA, or out with the OLD (1931–82)’ (ch. 7), John Henderson's ample, subtle, quirky history (and prehistory) of the Oxford Latin Dictionary. He fulfils his aim, ‘to outline the chief lines of transition, torsion and tension between initial determination and final realisation’ (139), and spotlights personalities (e.g. Burn, ‘the indefatigably incompetent Scottish mountaineer’, 171) and sharpened pens (of a report on one specimen entry, ‘The speech of the Second Murderer is even bloodier than its predecessor’, 160). By comparison, the fare provided in the last two chapters by Patrick James on the Cambridge Greek Lexicon and Richard Ashdowne on The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources is plainer; there is more methodology in the former, more history in the latter, but each author has much to say that will be of interest to lexicologists.

The book is generally well produced; Crowley 1989 and Dowling 1986 (both on 101) are missing from the bibliography to ch. 5, as is Coats 1906 from that to ch. 7; ‘Henderson 1998, n. 173’ (170 n. 22) should be ‘Henderson 1998, 113 n. 36’, and there are minor typos (e.g. ‘othe’ for ‘other’, 159, ‘th’ for ‘the’, 185; ‘somnum’ and ‘1882’ for ‘somnus’ and ‘1982’, 183). And I doubt whether John Henderson wrote ‘… the terms is gives its slippery terms’ (143).