Hobson-Jobson A glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive

The objects and scope of this work are explained in the Introductory Remarks which follow the Preface. Here it is desired to say a few words as to its history.
The book originated in a correspondence between the present writer, who was living at Palermo, and the late lamented Arthur Burnell, of the Madras Civil Service, one of the most eminent of modern Indian scholars, who during the course of our communications was filling judicial offices in Southern and Western India, chiefly at Tanjore. We had then met only once—at the India Library; but he took a kindly interest in work that engaged me, and this led to an exchange of letters, which went on after his return to India. About 1872—I cannot find his earliest reference to the subject—he mentioned that he was contemplating a vocabulary of Anglo-Indian words, and had made some collections with that view. In reply it was stated that I likewise had long been taking note of such words, and that a notion similar to his own had also been at various times floating in my mind. And I proposed that we should combine our labours.
I had not, in fact, the linguistic acquirements needful for carrying through such an undertaking alone; but I had gone through an amount of reading that would largely help in instances and illustrations, and had also a strong natural taste for the kind of work.
This was the beginning of the portly double-columned edifice which now presents itself, the completion of which my friend has not lived to see. It was built up from our joint contributions till his untimely death in 1882, and since then almost daily additions have continued to be made to the material and to the structure. The subject, indeed, had taken so comprehensive a shape, that it was becoming difficult to say where its limits lay, or why it should {viii}ever end, except for the old reason which had received such poignant illustration: Ars longa, vita brevis. And so it has been wound up at last.
The work has been so long the companion of my horae subsicivae, a thread running through the joys and sorrows of so many years, in the search for material first, and then in their handling and adjustment to the edifice—for their careful building up has been part of my duty from the beginning, and the whole of the matter has, I suppose, been written and re-written with my own hand at least four times—and the work has been one of so much interest to dear friends, of whom not a few are no longer here to welcome its appearance in print,[1] that I can hardly speak of the work except as mine.