N.H., The Ladies Dictionary (1694)

The ladies dictionary, being a general entertainment for the fair-sex was published in 1694 and offers around 1950 lexical and encyclopaedic entries, the great majority excerpted either verbatim or with some degree of abridgement or adaptation from other published books. It was the first substantial reference book to be published in England with women as its principal target audience, and was arguably the first alphabetically-arranged encyclopaedia to be published in English.