Index (publishing) - Earliest Examples in English

Earliest Examples in English

In the English language, indexes have been referred to as early as 1593, as can be seen from lines in Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander of that year:

Therefore, even as an index to a book
So to his mind was young Leander's look.

A similar reference to indexes is in Shakespeare's lines from Troilus and Cressida (I.3.344), written nine years later:

And in such indexes, although small pricks
To their subsequent volumes, there is seen
The baby figure of the giant mass
Of things to come at large.

But according to G. Norman Knight, "at that period, as often as not, by an 'index to a book' was meant what we should now call a table of contents."

Among the first indexes – in the modern sense – to a book in the English language was one in Plutarch's Parallel Lives, in Sir Thomas North's 1595 translation. A section entitled "An Alphabetical Table of the most material contents of the whole book" may be found in Henry Scobell's Acts and Ordinances of Parliament of 1658. This section comes after "An index of the general titles comprised in the ensuing Table". Both of these indexes predate the index to Alexander Cruden's Concordance (1737), which is erroneously held to be the earliest index found in an English book.