Ballantine Books
The Dictionary of Lost Words: Reese's Book Club
Couldn't load pickup availability
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
Share
Book Details
ISBN:
9781984820747
EAN:
9781984820747
Binding:
Paperback
Pages:
416
Authors:
Pip Williams
Publisher:
Ballantine Books
Published Date: 2022-03-05
View full details
This book made me laugh and cry. I felt grateful for the women (and men) who fought for women’s rights, like the vote, and other choices we women have today. I loved the reverence for words and the inclusion for groups not always noticed or taken seriously. I mourn that we still fight for those rights and maybe we always will. But there is hope. I will read this again, many times.
Loved the historical events, I use a dictionary a lot, never considered how it was written. Characters were engaging and lively.
This book made me, for the first time in my life, really look at and think about words on a much more meaningful level. I, too, was sent to the dictionary quite often when I was a child. I never looked at them as I now do since reading this fascinating, fictionalized historical account of the OED. The only area I feel cheated the reader was how quickly Esme’s role ended in the story. I felt it was short-changed, that her story was no longer important. But I do understand the need to transition the narrative and the “lost words” into new hands. I GREATLY APPRECIATED the attention given to spelling and grammar in this book!
I not only loved the style of writing, the many stories interwoven so beautifully, but also what I learned from reading this novel!
A fascinating child's perspective on the writing of the first Oxford Dictionary. As she matures her perspectives does as well and she sets about to create a dictionary of words that were excluded for various reasons.
