NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK - "Delightful . .
. [a] captivating and slyly subversive fictional paean to the real
women whose work on the Oxford English Dictionary went largely
unheralded."--The New York Times Book Review
"A marvelous fiction about the power of language to elevate or
repress."--Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author of
People of the Book
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly
curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden
shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are
collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young
Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a
slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table.
She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means "slave girl,"
begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by
the dictionary men.
As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to
women's and common folks' experiences often go unrecorded. And so she
begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the
Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of
the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill
those pages.
Set during the height of the women's suffrage movement and with the
Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost
narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men.
Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the
archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original
story. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightful, lyrical, and
deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language
to shape the world.
WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARD
