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Jaime
Kaminski
Sussex Archaeological Society
Barbican House
169 High Street
Lewes
BN8 1YE
As the number of sources of information about historical Sussex dialect is limited, further data are very welcome. This article discusses the purported examples of dialect speech published to illustrate the definitions of words listed in local glossaries in the period 1834-1957. An investigation of the five glossarists in question, William Durrant Cooper, William Holloway, William Parish, Bessie C. Curteis and Helena Hall, reveals the very mixed nature of this source of evidence: while some illustrative quotations are highly plausible, others are clearly fictive. But drawing on the more reliable of the glossarists, the article closes with examples of the information regarding Sussex speech that this previously-unused source of data can provide.