Benjamin Martin (lexicographer)
| Benjamin Martin | |
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| Born | 1704 Worplesdon, Surrey |
| Died | 9 February 1782 London |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | lexicographer |
Benjamin Martin (1704-1782) was a lexicographer who compiled one of the early English dictionaries, the Lingua Britannica Reformata (1749). He also was a lecturer on science and maker of scientific instruments.
Martin was born in Worplesdon, Surrey and began life as a ploughboy, but graduated to become a teacher. A legacy of £500 enabled him to buy books and instruments, and he became a lecturer and instrument maker. He was an early champion for the Newtonian system. In 1737, he published the Biblioteca Technologia - a survey of natural philosophy in 25 sub-headings.
In 1740, he moved to Fleet Street, near the Royal Society where his hero Newton would often lecture. He began manufacturing Hadley's quadrant (a predecessor to the sextant) and optical instruments. His business prospered, and he also became known as a spectacle maker. He continued to lecture on natural philosophy, and from 1755 to 1764, he also published Martin's magazine. The periodical, formally known as the General Magazine of Arts and Sciences, set out to provide subscribers with an encyclopedia's worth of knowledge "one Half-sheet upon a Science" at a time. He intended readers eventually to reorganize and rebind the separate parts of individual numbers into one large reference work.
In 1781, the seventy-seven-year-old Martin went bankrupt; a few years earlier he had handed over his business to several managers who proved inept. He attempted suicide, and while it was not immediately successful, the wound (nature unknown) was grievous enough and he failed to recover, and died on 9 February 1782.
In 1749, he published the Lingua Britannica Reformata, Or, A New English Dictionary. His dictionary incorporated a largely intact copy of Nathan Bailey's Universal Dictionary of 1721, which Benjamin Martin described as "the best English dictionary hitherto published". Bailey's dictionary in turn had copied heavily from the 1706 Phillips-Kersey English dictionary. A second edition of Martin's dictionary was published in 1754, a year before Samuel Johnson's dictionary.
In compiling his 24,500 word dictionary, he gave up on trying to "fix" the language:
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