The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary book cover

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary

Hardcover – October 2, 2003

by
Price
$9.39
Format
Hardcover
Pages
260
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0198607021
Dimensions
5.5 x 1.25 x 8.5 inches
Weight
1.3 pounds

Description

From Publishers Weekly With his usual winning blend of scholarship and accessible, skillfully paced narrative, Winchester (Krakatoa) returns to the subject of his first bestseller, The Professor and the Madman, to tell the eventful, personality-filled history of the definitive English dictionary. He emphasizes that the OED project began in 1857 as an attempt to correct the deficiencies of existing dictionaries, such as Dr. Samuel Johnson's. Winchester opens with an entertaining and informative examination of the development of the English language and pre-OED efforts. The originators of the OED thought the project would take perhaps a decade; it actually took 71 years, and Winchester explores why. An early editor, Frederick Furnivall, was completely disorganized (one sack of paperwork he shipped to his successor, James Murray, contained a family of mice). Murray in turn faced obstacles from Oxford University Press, which initially wanted to cut costs at the expense of quality. Winchester stresses the immensity and difficulties of the project, which required hundreds of volunteer readers and assistants (including J.R.R. Tolkien) to create and organize millions of documents: the word bondmaid was left out of the first edition because its paperwork was lost. Winchester successfully brings readers inside the day-to-day operations of the massive project and shows us the unrelenting passion of people such as Murray and his overworked, underpaid staff who, in the end, succeeded magnificently. Winchester's book will be required reading for word mavens and anyone interested in the history of our marvelous, ever-changing language.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist The story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary has been burnished into legend over the years, at least among librarians and linguists. In The Professor and the Madman (1998), Winchester examined the strange case of one of the most prolific contributors to the first edition of the OED--one W. C. Minor, an American who sent most of his quotation slips from an insane asylum. Now, Winchester takes on the dictionary's whole history, from the first attempts to document the English language in the seventeenth century, the founding of the Philological Society in Oxford in 1842, and the start of work on the dictionary in 1860; to the completion of the first edition nearly 70 years, 414,825 words, and 1,827,306 illustrative quotations later. Although there is plenty of detail here about the methodology (including the famous pigeon holes stuffed with quotations slips from contributors around the world), the emphasis is on personalities, in particular James Murray, who became the OED's third editor in 1879 and died in 1915, "well into the letter T." The project backers complained loudly about the slow pace over the years, but the scrupulous care taken by Murray and the many others who worked on the OED gave us what is arguably the world's greatest dictionary. Publication of this book coincides with the OED's seveny-fifth anniversary, even as work on the third edition is under way. Mary Ellen Quinn Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "Teeming with knowledge and alive with insights. Winchester handles humor and awe with modesty and cunning. His devotion to the story is the more eloquent for the cool-handedness of its telling. His prose is supremely readable, admirable in its lucid handling of lexicographical mire."--William F.Buckley, New York Times Book Review "The extraordinary story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary is a subject perfectly suited to Winchester's magpie mind.... Winchester's account is an affectionate and frankly partisan study of the making of a great dictionary. It is also an offbeat portrait of an extraordinarysociety."--Robert McCrumm, Los Angeles Times "Devastatingly brilliant.... Fascinating, witty, extremely well-written.... Winchester makes words exciting. He obviously loves them."--Rochelle O'Gorman, The Boston Globe "Winchester brings to life the trials and tribulations of creating the OED, particularly the never-dull personalities of those who were involved. Moreover, he delightfully, admiringly gives us an appreciation of the wonderfully adaptive, ever-expanding English language.... A story that could havebeen stultifyingly dull is fascinatingly told, with a verve and reverence for the English language that would have won huzzahs from Shakspere (Murray's favored spelling) himself."-- Forbes Magazine "As inspiring as it is informative, Simon Winchester's history of what it took to assemble the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is both a dazzling detective story and a poignant group portrait. A must-read for every language lover."-- Seattle Times "An inspired story of conflict, madness, genius, and inspiration so amusing that at times it reads like fiction--but it isn't."-- Library Journal (starred review) "Like Longitude ...a story of extraordinary endurance."--Clive Davis, The Wilson Quarterly "Winchester tells the story with great verve in an easy-going, anecdotal style that's delectably readable."-- Christian Science Monitor "Full of engaging characters and incidents."-- Wall Street Journal "Winchester has no peer at illuminating massive and complex endeavors through the quirks and foibles of the brilliant and powerful personalities who carry them out."-- Chicago Sun Times "A magnificent account, swift and compelling, of obsession, scholarship, and ultimately, philanthropy of the first magnitude."-- Kirkus Review (starred review) Simon Winchester is the author of the bestsellers The Map That Changed the World , The Madman and the Professor , and Krakatoa . He was a foreign correspondent for The Guardian and The Sunday Times and was based in Belfast, New Delhi, New York, London and Hong Kong. Winchester has written for Conde Nast Traveler, Smithsonian , and National Geographic . He lives in Massachusetts, New York, and the Western Isles of Scotland. Read more

Features & Highlights

  • From the best-selling author of
  • The Professor and the Madman
  • ,
  • The Map That Changed the World
  • , and
  • Krakatoa
  • comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary. Writing with marvelous brio, Winchester first serves up a lightning history of the English language--"so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully unwieldy"--and pays homage to the great dictionary makers, from "the irredeemably famous" Samuel Johnson to the "short, pale, smug and boastful"schoolmaster from New Hartford, Noah Webster. He then turns his unmatched talent for story-telling to the making of this most venerable of dictionaries. In this fast-paced narrative, the reader will discover lively portraits of such key figures as the brilliant but tubercular first editor HerbertColeridge (grandson of the poet), the colorful, boisterous Frederick Furnivall (who left the project in a shambles), and James Augustus Henry Murray, who spent a half-century bringing the project to fruition. Winchester lovingly describes the nuts-and-bolts of dictionary making--how unexpectedlytricky the dictionary entry for
  • marzipan
  • was, or how
  • fraternity
  • turned out so much longer and
  • monkey
  • so much more ancient than anticipated--and how
  • bondmaid
  • was left out completely, its slips found lurking under a pile of books long after the B-volume had gone to press. We visit the ugly corrugatediron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium--the
  • Scrippy
  • or the Shed, as locals called it--and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W. C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, andultimate redemption.
  • The Meaning of Everything
  • is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project--a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, theworld's unrivalled
  • uber
  • -dictionary.

Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Reviews

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A Story of Flawed People Who Together, Made A Masterpiece

The Oxford English Dictionary is an unrivaled monument to the history, beauty and complexity of the English language. The story of the men and women who made this marvelous work makes for compellling reading, especially in the hands of such a skilled storyteller as Simon Winchester.
"The Professor and the Madman," Winchester's first best-seller, was the story of Dr. W.C. Minor, an American who had gone to England in what was a vain hope of regaining his sanity. Instead, he committed a senseless murder, and was imprisoned in an asylum for life. Minor found redemption in his otherwise ruined life by devoting decades of service as a volunteer reader/researcher for the OED.
In his introduction to this volume, Winchester explains that an editor at the Oxford University Press suggested that since he had written a footnote to the story of the great enterprise, he might want to undertake the main story. Fortunately for us, he took up the suggestion with enthusiasm.
The pace of the narrative never falters in its entire 250 pages. The opening chapter provides a brief overview of the evolution of English and of previous efforts to compile a truly comprehensive dictionary of the language--and why all fell short of that lofty goal.
What became the OED enterprise had its origins in the late 1850s, but the first completed dictionary pages did not see the light of day until the early 1880s. Why the project was almost stillborn, how it survived deaths, disorganization, lack of funds and innumerable other setbacks--all of this is brought vividly to life in Winchester's tale. Even when the great editor James Murray took the helm and the project finally emerged from chaos, it still faced obstaces, especially from those who would have sacraficed quality in order to produce a swifter, but less authoratative, final product.
Today, the third edition of the OED is in preparation by a staff working in modern offices, making use of all the tools of twenty-first century information technology. The contrast to the conditions facing makers of the original OED, laboring by hand, sorting tens of thousands of slips of paper into pigenhole slots in an ugly, dank corrugated tin shed (grandly named the "Scriptorium" by Murray) is startling, and makes their achievement all the more amazing--and grand.
Dr. Minor makes a brief appearance in the story, along with some of the other unusual and exemplary volunteer contributors from around the world who combed nearly 800 years of English literature to give the OED its impressive depth. While none of the other's stories may be quite as extreme as Minor's, it's clear that for many, their involvement in this great cause (with no pay and little recognition) also gave depth and meaning to their lives.
It's the vivid, human qualities that Winchester illuminates so well make this a great story...one that you won't want to miss.
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The Making of a Gargantuan Classic

In a world of uncertainties, there is at least one human effort we can count on. For 75 years, if you have needed to know about an English word, you could turn to the _Oxford English Dictionary_ and you could expect enlightenment. You could know you were getting the authoritative low-down on any word you might come across, and you could not only find its definition, but its history of use given in quotations dating from its very first known appearance in print. For word fans, using the _OED_ is a joy, and every turn of the pages in its monumental volumes registers new affection and admiration for an unequalled intellectual accomplishment. Five years ago, Simon Winchester wrote _The Professor and the Madman_, an inspiring account of an inmate of an asylum who helped compile the _OED_'s words. It was a footnote to the _OED_'s larger history, and now, in _The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary_ (Oxford University Press), Winchester has given that history with the same humane and appreciative tone of his first book on the subject. Anyone who uses English ought to know the _OED_, and anyone who loves the _OED_ will find this book fascinating.
Winchester gives a fine brief guide to the history of our language, and shows that by the Victorian age, philologists felt a comprehensive dictionary was needed. In 1842, the Philological Society settled on a proposal of a gargantuan dictionary, one that would have old words and new, one that would have every word and every meaning for that word. There was certainly something of power in such a scheme; great men and great ambitions would push the influence of English throughout the Empire, nay, the world, and increase the influence of Britain and her church. The story of the _OED_ is inextricably the story of the chief editor for the original edition, James Augustus Henry Murray. He was the son of a Scottish linen draper, and after a rural upbringing, he had to leave school at 14 because of poverty. However, by that time, he had developed precocious interests in geology, astronomy, archeology, and plenty of other fields, especially languages. He became a teacher at a boys' school in London, but in 1879, he was appointed editor of the dictionary project. Murray was not just a lexicographic and organizational genius, however, but a cheerful and persistent diplomat, who was adept at dealing with difficult personalities and making friends with those who were originally nuisances. He was also a family man whose very happy marriage produced eleven remarkable children. The children never had pocket money but by earning it in sorting dictionary slips. One wrote, "Hours & hours of our childhood were spent in this useful occupation. The motive actuating us was purely mercenary." One unforeseen result of this upbringing is that when the crossword puzzle craze came on, all the Murray children were brilliant at them.
Murray himself died in 1905 and did not live to see the completion of the work in 1928 (there was a supplement in 1933 for all the new words that had been put in use since the start). But he knew himself that there would really be no completion of the work any more than the language itself would be complete. A dictionary is a snapshot of current language, a verbal description that rapidly goes out of date. There has been a second edition, and a web-based version, and a Revised Edition is being worked on, which will possibly weigh a sixth of a ton and comprise forty volumes. Perhaps, though it will appear in only an electronic form. But Murray's basic plan for the dictionary was so good that the plan has remained intact, and the book will continue reflect the growth of our language. The _OED_ is still looking for volunteer readers, to make slips for new words and also to try to find previous usages for words already in. For instance, according to the _OED_'s last bulletin, if you can find a source for the phrase "pick up steam" (that is, to accelerate) from before 1944, the editors want to hear from you.
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Love's Labors Last

Oddly enough, I first became fascinated by words and their meanings many moons ago when I learned the difference between etymology and entymology (and had to use the "trick" of remembering that, because it contained an "n", as did the word insect, entymology was the word which meant the study of insects, and etymology was the word that defined the study of the history and development of words). The world, thank goodness, is full of people who love words and language, and Simon Winchester is one of those people. His enthusiasm comes through on every page of this wonderful book. One gets the impression that Mr. Winchester, if he possessed a time machine, would happily go back to, say, 1880, and be one of the numerous and unsung readers that sent in "slips" to the editors of the "great dictionary project," to show the various historical usages of words. As Mr. Winchester points out, this was a labor of love by the few who were paid, and by the many who were unpaid. The man who was mainly responsible for the form the dictionary assumed, its thoroughness and layout, and who guided the great project from when he signed a formal contract in March 1879, up until his death in 1915, was James Murray. (The 1879 contract, by the way, specified that the project would be completed within 10 years. It wasn't. The OED wasn't completed until 1928, 13 years after Murray's death.) Murray was an amazing man. Although he had very little formal education, he was intellectually formidable - being familiar with over 20 languages. As Mr. Winchester points out, though, Victorian England seemed to produce an inordinate number of such people - and quite a few of them contributed to the creation of the dictionary. A great deal of the fun of this book comes from learning about the personalities of some of these people. Murray's predecessor, Frederick Furnivall, was a brilliant man, but he lacked staying power and lost interest in the project - leaving things in a muddle. (When Murray took over he had to try to track down millions of the vital "usage slips" that were scattered all over the place - Furnivall had some and readers all over England, Europe and North America had others. There were sacks and sacks of crumbling, moldy, wet, and sometimes illegible slips. One sack had a dead rat in it. Another sack had a family of mice living quite happily amongst all that paper, which was perfect "nesting material.") Unfortunately for the dictionary, Furnivall seemed to be more interested in women. He dumped his wife and, at the age of 58, took up with his 21 year old secretary. He was also very interested in sculling, and managed to combine his two favorite interests by frequenting the local teashop and gathering up as many pretty waitresses as he could, and taking them out on the river to teach them the joys of sculling. Another interesting man was Henry Bradley, who became joint senior editor in 1896. He had taught himself Russian in 14 days, and had the uncanny ability to read a book when it was upside down. Mr. Winchester also mentions that the editors sometimes consulted "linguistic advisers," such as James Platt "who knew scores of languages and once famously declared that the first twelve tongues were always the most difficult, but having mastered them, the following hundred should not pose too much of a problem." Sometimes Mr. Winchester mentions a contributor only, I suspect, because of the author's love of language: he relishes telling us about the "magnificently named" Hereward Thimbleby Price, who was born in - are you ready for this? - Amatolakinandisamisichana, Madagascar. The author tells us that the dictionary was supposed to take 10 years, but it took 54; it was supposed to be 7,000 pages, but it wound up being 16,000; and, it was supposed to cost 9,000 pounds, but wound up costing 300,000 pounds. Lest you think think the delays and cost overruns have something to do with British academic quirkiness, Mr. Winchester informs us that it is much more a matter of thoroughness. He points out that a German dictionary started in 1838 was not finished until 1961; a Dutch dictionary started in 1851 was not completed until 1998; and the Swedes, who started a comprehensive dictionary back in the 1800's, are currently stuck on the letter S. "The Meaning of Everything" is a great story, well and lovingly told by Mr. Winchester, full of incredibly bright and interesting people, and - best of all - giving you a behind-the-scenes look at the labor-intensive creation of this great dictionary.
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Word! This shizzit be thuggin some PIMP 4-11, mofos!

Yo, G. "The Meaning of Everything" busts CAPS in the minds of those whack-a$$ pseudo-intellectuals whose bibliophilic sets be worth nothin' more than a spray tag on Draper's Corner Market in the crack ghetto. Me and my bizzitches be readin' out loud in 'tween the down-lows. Them ho's don't know junk about OG Winchester's MAD skills--they be spitting whack-a$$ lunacy about how the OED was started with "A." Man, any crip fool be knowin' they pimp-walked all the way to the "M"'s befo' stabling 450,000 words like fine ho's. Compare that to old-skool dictinary stylin' with only 40k small grand words, brother. Got to give peace and props to the O.G.'s in the Dictionary set, but Winchester's OED analysis sways the barrio with a whole new sound.
Homeboys in my hood be knockin' crack houses for bling-bling to buy this book. We be thuggin on corners and smacking our mommas just to sneak peeks at this phat lyric ISBN. Winchester be throwin' down like C-Murder in a cell, word! I pour 40's for my lost homies and bring home new words for my babies' mommas; they cheese for that cheddar like bibliophilic crack ho's.
I found Winchester's comparisons to Webster's whack-azz O.G. compilatin' to be MAD dogging. Simon's footnotes alone bust a cap on whack-minded fools like W.C. Minor (he a cracked-out skank anyway). This book be on hit, yo. Good to finally see a brother from the real inner concrete Oxfordshire 'hood representin' our set and turf with flow and finesse.
Keep it real, homies. RIP Tupac, and mad props to Simon Winchester. This cat's got it going ON, no diggity.
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An excellent book - not just for bibliophiles!

This is a wonderful book and it is not just for bibliophiles (though anyone who loves words will LOVE this book). It is also a human story, and shows how much love, care and devotion goes into things that we take for granted, like dictionaries. How exciting to see a book as well written, moving and intelligent as this in the top 100 bestseller list - who says that the world is dumbing down? Buy it and enjoy! Christopher Catherwood (Oxford graduate; author of CHRISTIANS MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC RAGE and frequent Scrabble, Lexicon and other word games player)
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A biography of a Dictionary

There were some human endeavours of the modern world which were to be known to posterity as spetacularly gigantic, given the difficulty, hardship and human toil to have them fully completed. The British effort to build the Suez Channel, and the American on the turn of the 19th century to build the Panama Channel, are good examples of such gigantic steps the human race took in order to bridge distant lands and to easy communication between peoples of distant lands. The same could be said of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), a fenomenal task both by the ample range of its scope, which was to solidify and market English as the leading language of the world, and by the number of people involved in the project. Editors? Eight. Number of pages? More than 20.000. Number of entries? More than 400.000, and so on. The task , which initially was estimated to take some 10 years, did not reach its end before many decades passed.
The Meaning of Everything, by Simon Winchester, is a detailed account of the making of the OED, and the reader is entitled to a full range of the most interesting narrative concerning the idiosincratic personalities of each and every successive editor of the dictionary, specially of the legendary Scottsman James Murray, with whom the dictionary is most commonly associated, due to the maturity of purpose the project acqurired in his experienced hands. By the way, Murray was a polymath, a man grown up in poverty but with a keen curiosity and many different interests and who spoke/read more than 25 languages. The many photographs of him and of the many editors are a good add-on to the book.
The expert author guides the reader trough the intrincacies of the project, beginning with a very adequate explanation of the origins of the English language, as viewed from Victorian Britain, and its evolution trough the maze of influences the language received from Old English, Old German, French and Latin. A good portrait of what was the idea at the time concerning what a good dictionary should have is also given, thus permitting the reader to have a balanced judgement of the task to be performed.
To sum it up, The Meaning of Everything is a good book to everyone interested in the origin of languages and in interesting bios of many very special men. I hope you enjoy it as I did.
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Concise history of the OED

Immediately after I finished undergraduate school, some thirty years ago, I joined a book club, finally free to read for pleasure once again. In exchange for ordering x-number of books and promising to buy several more over the coming year, I received a bonus: a micro-print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, two large blue volumes with print just large enough that the naked eye could recognize it as print, but small enough that one could not read it comfortably without the magnifying glass that came in its own box and drawer at the top of the box. Although I was familiar with the OED, this was my first extended exposure to its riches. I was fascinated with the many illustrative quotes drawn from English literature. What surprises me now is that I had so little curiosity about who collected all those quotes. Who read all the books necessary to find all those sentences? And how did they catalogue them?
Simon Winchester answers both questions (volunteers all over the world to the first, and specially built pigeon holes to the second) and many, many more in his short, but informative "The Meaning of Everything." In lucid prose, with just enough humorous anecdote to moisten what could have been dry facts, he traces the history of the OED from its inception in a speech to the Philological Society in 1857 to its first complete printing in 1928 and then through its various revisions and expansions, including my micro-print edition.
Along the way, he drops in character sketches of some of the major players, describes some of the major predecessor dictionaries, offers some almost unbelievable statistics and compares the OED to its peers (if one admits any exist) in other countries, always with a gentle sense of humor. He shows admirable discretion and restraint in selecting his examples. Rather than attempt sketches of all the various types of volunteers, for example, he contents himself with portraits of a few representatives, and includes a list of some of the more colorful and evocative names to stimulate the reader's imagination.
If you use the OED regularly, or even occasionally, you may be as fascinated as I at how long it took to finish, and that the project was almost abandoned - several times. If you are not familiar with the OED, this history should be sufficient to entice you into finding a copy to peruse
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improves on "The Professor..."

Simon Winchester's The Meaning of Everything seems at first glance to merely be a sequel to the popular The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary. But I found The Meaning... to be a vastly superior book. Frankly I think that The Professor... would have made a good, long, chapter in this book (as it is you have several pages of rehash to retell Minor's story).
I think what makes book better is that Winchester has more meat to chew on. The making of the OED was not a simple affair and the whole thing seems to have very nearly met its end on more than one occasion. The book reads like a fantastic novel, complete with good guys and evil villains. And along the way you get to learn a good deal about a) the English language, b) lexicography (Dictionary study) and c) the English society that produced such a monumental (in all meanings of the word) work.
I felt a little cheated towards the end when the last 70 odd years of the OED are wrapped up in a few pages. I would have found it fascinating to learn more how the work of gathering up new words for the planned 2007 edition has changed since the original plan in the 1860s. And Winchester still tends to wander just a bit too much for my taste.
All in all a good solid read that will entertain and edify at the same time.
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Putting "aal" to "zyxt" between covers.

"I rather wish I could have a go at it."

No one could have ever estimated the foundational determination behind such a simple statement. It was uttered by the 38-year old bank clerk, James Augustus Henry Murray in response to a suggestion that he consider becoming the editor of the then floundering Oxford English Dictionary project. Indeed, at the time (March, 1876) all indications were that the unprecedented mammoth work, intended to supercede previous efforts by Samuel Johnson, Charles Richardson, and Noah Webster, would fail.... that it would in fact never reach completion.

But it was completed, and this is the story of the arduous journey of the OED.

Winchester has written a fascinating, well researched book. I enjoyed every moment of reading it. [I suppose I may be biased in that I have had an interest in the OED for a long while, and still dream of perhaps owning it one day]. When I told friends what I was reading, several of them looked at me like I was crazy. "You're reading a book about a dictionary?"

But Simon Winchester is passionate about his topic, and really, his reader finds out that there is a lot more to the compilation of "the meaning of everything" than you could ever imagine. Incredible feats of organization and participation were required. Incredible setbacks were overcome, time after time. Hundreds and hundreds of people were enlisted in a project lasting over seven decades. The result, in 1928, was a mind-numbing 178 miles of typeface within twenty volumes of morocco leather! And in its revisions, the OED remains to this day, indisputably, the world's greatest dictionary of the English language.

James Murray would not live to see the finished product. This honor would fall to the then Editor-in-Chief, Sir William Craigie. However, it was as certain to all of those working through the final stages at that time, as it is to us reading of it today, that were it not for the heroic determination of Murray, the OED as we know it, would most likely never have survived the initial complications of its existence. It would not exist today.

Winchester has told a grand, wonderful story about a process that, in the hands of a lesser writer, could be as boring as cabbage growing.

He brings it to life. It is one of the best things I've read all year.

T.y.L.i.I.
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The Triumph of English

The English language is now, and has been for some time, the world's language. This may grate with the Francophones of the world but it is, nevertheless, an indisputable fact.

Perhaps the greatest strength of English is that it is constantly evolving. New words and expressions come and go at a rate of knots. There is no equivalent of the Academie Francaise monitoring matters and trying to guide the language is certain directions. English is wonderfully malleable.

Yet for all its flexibility, every modern language needs certain basic rules or understandings in order that we can communicate in some common manner. To a large extent, these "rules" were laid out by the creators of the Oxford English Dictionary. In this regard, the chief driving force was James Murray who supervised the dictionary's first edition.

Simon Winchester has done a terrific job in covering the history of Murray's efforts and the trials and tribulations of the dictionary's creation. I can appreciate that many might think that a book about a dictionary could be overly dry. Do not be concerned. The book is interesting, sometimes whimsical and always fascinating. To all lovers of the English language, read this book.
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