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The book is large!

For the first edition the paper was of the finest quality and cost Johnson more than he had been paid. It contained 42,773 words and definitions. [by comparison the 2-volume Oxford shorter English dictionary contains Half a million words – the 20 volume OED has 59 million words] Of importance was the fact that Johnson incorporated quotations to illustrate the meaning of a word (see figure above). Physically large, it came with an equally hefty price: £4/10/-. (equivalent to £850 in 2014). So discouraging was the price that by 1784, thirty years after the first edition was published, when the dictionary had by then run through five editions, only about 6,000 copies were in circulation—an average sale of 200 books a year for thirty years.
Johnson’s financial condition remained parlous for some years until 1762 when George III granted him an annual pension of £300 a year.

Johnson’s Dictionary set the standard that was followed by later dictionaries e.g. Webster’s and the Oxford and in many cases simply using his definitions.