The Physical Book

This copy’s cover and binding were made with cracked oxblood leather, now ragged but with the stitches still intact so that there are no detached pages.

The book measures 17 by 12 cm, and is 5 cm thick. That is not so big for a dictionary, and it can easily fit into a bag and be carried around. As Blount’s preface addresses a scope much broader than the literary elite, Glossographia can be said to be partially designed for entertaining those who are functionally literate. For more speculation about why the small size, see Working Methods.

Glossographia is an octavo volume, in which 16 pages of text were printed, and folded 3 times to create 8 leaves or pages. You can clearly see the key word on the bottom right-hand corner of the left page, signalling the first word that begins the next page (top left-hand corner of the right page).

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