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The first thing that came to mind was the Roud Folk Song Index, a database of 250,000 songs all researched and compiled by a former librarian in the 70s, as a l

The first thing that came to mind was the Roud Folk Song Index, a database of 250,000 songs all researched and compiled by a former librarian in the 70s, as a labor of love (and scholarly dedication, I guess). And then Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, a dictionary researched and written by a single man. He thought it would take three years, ended up taking nine years. All the more impressive for the reckless confidence paid off by diligence. The famous anecdote Boswell reported about Dr. Johnson's confidence in his own abilities as a scholar: >ADAMS: But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary. >JOHNSON: Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.

pklausler 5y ago
Not to take away from Johnson's accomplishment with his Dictionary but he did have a half-dozen staff. https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2009/septemberoctober/feature/what-samuel-johnson-really-did https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2009/septemberoctober/feature...
- karaterobot 5y ago
  I think the quote you're citing is this, right? > And Johnson did not write his dictionary alone: He had half a dozen assistants, and the history of lexicography tells us that assistants influence dictionary-making more than either eighteenth-century social hierarchies or the Great Author theory behind Johnson’s reputation admits. My understanding was that the work of the assistants was to copy down quotations Johnson had researched. I imagine they did other things too, but did they write the dictionary, or did they write down the dictionary? If there's a serious claim that they had input on the content, then that's one thing, otherwise I'll continue hewing to my unreconstructed Great Author narrative :) I had also thought of Shakespeare when this question was asked, but then thought "well, I'm fairly certain he wrote the plays mostly by himself, but I'm also fairly sure other people, unattributed, committed a line here or there, and his actors probably made contributions that found their way into the folio editions, and so on, so maybe that's not a good answer to this question." I think Johnson, being as much an arrogant misanthrope as he was a titanic scholar, was probably less collaborative than Shakespeare in many ways, including his work on the Dictionary.

pklausler 5y ago

Not to take away from Johnson's accomplishment with his Dictionary but he did have a half-dozen staff. https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2009/septemberoctober/feature/what-samuel-johnson-really-did https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2009/septemberoctober/feature...

karaterobot 5y ago
I think the quote you're citing is this, right? > And Johnson did not write his dictionary alone: He had half a dozen assistants, and the history of lexicography tells us that assistants influence dictionary-making more than either eighteenth-century social hierarchies or the Great Author theory behind Johnson’s reputation admits. My understanding was that the work of the assistants was to copy down quotations Johnson had researched. I imagine they did other things too, but did they write the dictionary, or did they write down the dictionary? If there's a serious claim that they had input on the content, then that's one thing, otherwise I'll continue hewing to my unreconstructed Great Author narrative :) I had also thought of Shakespeare when this question was asked, but then thought "well, I'm fairly certain he wrote the plays mostly by himself, but I'm also fairly sure other people, unattributed, committed a line here or there, and his actors probably made contributions that found their way into the folio editions, and so on, so maybe that's not a good answer to this question." I think Johnson, being as much an arrogant misanthrope as he was a titanic scholar, was probably less collaborative than Shakespeare in many ways, including his work on the Dictionary.