A Dictionary of the English Language  

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Romance as defined by Samuel Johnson in his A Dictionary of the English Language of 1756. The first edition being 1755, there is no reason to assume that it was different. Romance is defined as a "military fable of the middle ages; a tale of wild adventures in war and love. Milton. Waller. Dryden." It is also defined as "a lie; a fiction." From the lemma romantick is omitted (because it is on the next column): "3. Fanciful; full of wild scenery. Thomson."

Novel as defined by Samuel Johnson in his A Dictionary of the English Language of 1756. The first edition being 1755, there is no reason to assume that it was different.

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A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) is an English dictionary by Samuel Johnson. It is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language.

There was dissatisfaction with the dictionaries of the period, so in June 1746 a group of London booksellers contracted Johnson to write a dictionary. Johnson took seven years to complete the work, although he had claimed he could finish it in three. He did so single-handedly, with only clerical assistance to copy the illustrative quotations that he had marked in books. Johnson produced several revised editions during his life.

Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 173 years later, Johnson's was viewed as the pre-eminent English dictionary. According to Walter Jackson Bate, the Dictionary "easily ranks as one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship, and probably the greatest ever performed by one individual who laboured under anything like the disadvantages in a comparable length of time".