Cooper’s Thesaurus Lingvae Romanae & Britannicae Was lauded by Queen Elizabeth, used by most of the poets and playwrights of the time. What single book could afford us a better view of how sixteenth century sounds and thought than this fun and informative. Here is the description and some images with excerpts of the copy I offer now.

760J Cooper, Thomas. (1517-1594)

Thesaurus Lingvae Romanae & Britannicae, tam accurate congestus, ut nihil pene in eo desyderari possit, quod vel Latine complectaturamplissimus Stephani Thesaurus, vel Anglice, toties aucta Eliotae Bibliotheca: opera & industria Thomae Cooperi Magdalenesis. Quid fructus ex hoc Thesauro studiosi possint excerpere, & quam rationem secutus author sit in Vocabulorum interpretatione & dispositione, post epistolam demonstratur. Accessit Dictionarium Historicum & poeticum propria vocabula Virorum, Mulierum, Sectarum, Populorum, Orbium, Montium, & caeterorum locorum complectens, & in his iucundissimas & omnium cognitione dignissimas historiae.

London: [publisher not identified] [J. Charlewood?],, 1584

Price $3,800

Folio, 12x 8 inches. Third edition. This edition was preceded by editions in 1565 and 1573. [6], ¶6 A-Y6, 2A-2Y6, 3A-3Y6, 4A-4Y6, 5A-5Y6, 6A-6V6,The first leaf and the last leaf are blank and lacking. Bound in 19th-century three quarter calf over cloth, with gold lettering to spine. Raised bands. Recent rebacking.

Cooper, in addition to his controversial and historical works, (he completed Lanquet’s Chronicle and became embroiled in two of the greatest controversies of ecclesiastical polity of the sixteenth century in England: the Jewel/Harding exchanges and the “Martin Marprelate” controversy) his expanded and corrected edition of Eliot’s dictionary appeared in 1552 and 1559. He then went to work on what the DNB calls “his greatest literary work” the present “Thesaurus Lingvae Romanae & Britannicae” According to the DNB this work “delighted Queen Elizabeth so much that she expressed her determination to promote the author as far as lay in her power.” Originally published in 1565, Thomas Cooper’s famous Latin English dictionary was of the greatest importance in shaping Elizabethan education.

It owes its name in part to Estienne’s “Thesaurus linguae Latinae” of 1532, and is indebted as well to Sir Thomas Elyot’s dictionary of 1532 (Cooper later edited the “Bibliotheca Eliotae”), as well as to the literary humanist tradition of Northern Europe, notably Erasmus and Bude. 


The book contains several epistles—one a dedication to Robert Dudley and the others notes to the reader on the use of the book—and several poems for the author by other academics in both Latin and Greek. Only one of the epistles uses English, and this one describes the use and organization of the volume and how words are organized into “primitives” and “derivatives”. 

The Thesaurus was a standard reference during the formative years of Edmund Spencer, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare* and Ben Jonson; and for scholars today it remains one of the most important books for the study of the English idiom of the Elizabethan period. “M Cooper was made dean of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1567, dean of Gloucester in 1569, bishop of Lincoln in 1571, and bishop of Winchester in 1584.

STC 5689; ESTC (RLIN),; S121950; Vancil, p. 59; Zaunmuller, col. 120; Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries, chapt. VIII. Green.I. Humanism and Protestantism in early modern English education].