Seven Thousand Words Often Mispronounced (By William Henry P. Phyfe, member of the American Philological Assosciation; Member of the Spelling-Reform Assosciation; Author of “The School Pronouncer,” Based on “Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary”; “How Should I Pronounce? Or the Principles of the Art of Correct Pronunciation: A Manual for Schools, Colleges, and Private Use”; Etc., Etc.)

For the anal-retentive man who has everything, Seven Thousand Words Often Mispronounced: A Complete Hand-Book of Difficulties in English Pronunciation Including an Unusually Large Number of Proper Names and Words and Phrases From Foreign Languages.

Interestingly, it’s dedicated to Edwin Booth, whose accurate and scholarly pronunciation of the English language has been to the American people for over a generation a model of excellence and grace. Edwin is John Wilke’s brother. He was very famous for playing Hamlet. (Polonius. – What do you read, my lord? Hamlet. – Words, words, words.)

So um… horribly exciting. I had some cool stuff about steam engines. But I cannot find them. Five-hundred pages of phonetic spellings did seem awfully Victorian to me, however.

Phyfe, William Henry P. Seven Thousand Words Often Mispronounced. New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Knickerbocker Press. 1891.