The second edition appeared in 1936, contained about 3,000 revisions and additions, and was reprinted in 1939. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Hardcover): 1 volume.Shorter Oxford English Dictionary/The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Hardcover): 2 volumes.It was reprinted in March and April of that year and again in 1934. The first edition was published in February 1933. Onions wrote that SOED was "to present in miniature all the features of the principal work" and to be "a quintessence of those vast materials" in the complete OED. Coulson (Jessie Coulson) ("W") under the direction of C. The remaining letters were completed by H. He laboured until his death in 1922, at which point he had completed "A" to "T", and "V". However, no action was taken until 1902, when the work was begun by William Little, a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. An abridgement of the complete work was contemplated from 1879, when the Oxford University Press took over from the Philological Society on what was then known as A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. The first editor, William Little, worked on the book from 1902 until his death in 1922. The SOED is a two-volume abridgement of the twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary ( OED). The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary ( SOED) is an English language dictionary published by the Oxford University Press.