#BookReview: The Dictionary of Lost Words
This is an engaging and deftly told story about love, loss and the power of language, revealing how history is often skewed depending on who is holding the pen.
In this remarkable debut based on actual events, author Pip Williams weaves a fictional story around the creation of the very first Oxford English Dictionary.
The dictionary was compiled in an intensive process that spanned many years (1879 – 1928) and required the help of a great many scholars, many of them women.
Set at the time of the emerging women’s suffrage movement and World War I, the story centres on young Esme, the daughter of a lexicographer.
Their shared life revolves around the dictionary’s creation.
Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded.
She begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.
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