A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries

"I’ve put Julie Coleman in because she does stand out in the relatively small circle of slang experts. I will be the first to acknowledge that they are not easy books. There is a great deal of statistical material but she has covered pretty much everything. I would be very surprised if there is something she hasn’t covered. It is very useful. The important thing about her is that she gives an unrivalled coverage of the dictionaries in the field of slang from the very first in 1531 through to the most recent. And it’s not just mainstream dictionaries. She offers information on enormous amounts of supporting slang – truckers’ slang, college slang and all that kind of thing. It’s a superb collection. If you want to see what has been done in the way of writing of slang lexicography for 500 years, then this is the place to go. The very first collections of slang were criminal cant. Criminal cant is the spine of all slang. If the environment of slang is always the city, then its central preoccupation is invariably crime. So obviously there are a lot of crime-related books which she covers."