The Dictionary of Lost Words

By Pip Williams

 

Do you remember the Oxford English Dictionary? You may have used it at school, impressed by the multiple volumes in the school library, or your family may have invested in the edition that had two volumes of tiny print, which you read using the magnifying glass that came with the set. It was, and still is, the definitive historical dictionary on the English language, tracing not only the definitions but also the earliest uses of English words, often accompanied by including quotations.

Pip Williams’s lovely historical novel stars Esme Nicoll, whom we meet as a child. Her father “Da” is one of the lexicographers building the dictionary, writing individual words and their definitions on slips of paper. He files these in pigeonholes, later to be edited, revised, and ultimately added to the dictionary’s text. Motherless, Esme accompanies Da to the Scriptorium, sitting on the floor under the sorting table where her father spends his workdays. Da loves Esme but depends on her godmother for the more difficult parts of parenting. Esme’s closest companion is Lizzie, maid to the book’s editor, Sir James Murray. It is a time of male domination and the stirrings of women’s suffrage, ending with the Great War.

Esme, fascinated by all the new words she is learning to read, begins to wonder about the ways in which people, especially women, use words. Why are some words considered inappropriate or “not solid,” as her father says, and why do working folk use different words and expressions from their masters? Secretly she compiles her own list of words omitted from the dictionary.

Her story is beautifully told, full of love and tragedy, and sweeps the reader along to its touching conclusion. Current issues such as gender bias and inequality are treated subtly, but a book club could find much to discuss here. With its emphasis on women’s roles in public life, the novel holds special interest for Leaguers.

—Elsa and Bob Pendleton, LWV-PA members in absentia