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Like the text books they complement, dictionaries are widely used tools in schools. This article examines which dictionaries were authorised for use in schools from 1880 to 1960 by the Department of Public Instruction, the definitive authority for education in Quebec in the absence of a government department, and what use was made of them. During the period examined in this study, dictionaries had to receive endorsement, in the same manner as all text books for francophone public schools, from the Catholic Committee of the Council of Public Instruction, which was comprised half of Catholic bishops from Quebec and the other half from the Catholic laity. Text books and dictionaries were subjected to the meticulous and critical examination of the clerical authorities, who had the text modified or removed illustrations that did not seem to conform to orthodoxy in their eyes before granting their approval. Even though other dictionaries were circulating in Quebec, notably those of the publishers Mame, Quillet-Flammarion, and Hatier, it is the Larousse dictionary, particularly the Dictionnaire complet de la langue française with Canadian supplement, that dominated the period and that made the Montreal publisher Beauchemin its fortune. This study shows that the imported French book could only be distributed in Quebec and in Canada as long as the content met the moral standards of the Catholic Committee of the Council of Public Instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]