The following introduction was written by John Renfroe and published here: Learning Classical Chinese is for everyone (no, seriously!). The article contains an introduction to classical Chinese, as well as many recommendations for books to use, including this one.

This is the first dictionary of Classical Chinese published in English in over 70 years, and it’s very good. Of particular note are two features: 1) it contains the Middle Chinese for each character, and 2) it points out potential translation pitfalls, such as the fact that chái 豺 should be “dhole” rather than “jackal” (which was a more common, but erroneous translation for a long time). One huge selling point for this dictionary is that it’s available as an add-on to Pleco, so I highly recommend this one for any non-native speakers learning Classical Chinese.