The outcome of a semester’s primary research in UBC’s Rare Books and Special Collections, this site provides an in-depth exploration of a book published in 1696: William Salmon’s The Family Dictionary. As insightful as it is entertaining, a wealth of domestic reference material ranging from the medical to the culinary is printed on its aging pages.

Each page on this website provides a different focus with regards to the book, examining it as an artifact that participates in literary, cultural, and culinary traditions, as well as a document that resounds with the personality of its author. Special attention is also paid to the book as a physical object that illuminates the relationship between formal choices and marketing, reading, use and convention, and that has its own specific material history.

Read in page order from left to right, or browse at will – the hyperlinks will allow you to navigate between internal pages and provide additional reading and definitions outside this website. I encourage you to click on the photos, as they are of sufficient quality to provide a decent close-up. I have also listed the sources consulted in my research on a separate page – this will guide you to the broader nexus of conversations in which this work is situated.

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learn more about:

the form | the book market | the author | the recipes | sources