A real engaging story of words and love. It has a tinge of sadness throughout but the characters were all well drawn and it covers an interesting part of history. And I’d never thought about how a dictionary is put together especially without technology.

I don't know why it took me so long to read this book. It's a beautiful historical account of dictionaries throughout the ages. Highly recommend

This is a story about a group of men in Oxford, working from an outbuilding in the garden, putting together the first English dictionary. An interesting story and well told, but what makes this book special are the wonderful characters, their lives and a beautiful love story. Richly told I would highly recommend. I couldn't wait to pick it up again and continue on their journeys.

'm not sure what I expected from this book but it wasn't what I got. The compilation of the OED is a fascinating subject and Esme's story both challenged and progressed the narrative. Her quest to preserve words more commonly used by women (especially working-class women) raised several questions about what words were deemed as having enough merit to be included in the OED and why. The dictionary was curated by a specific set of people with their own biases and privileges, and Esme's story shone a light on the words and people they forgot.

I think the main reason I couldn't give this book 5 stars was the relentless sorrow and loss that permeated the final part. It was almost too sad to bear and left me feeling rather depressed. I don't expect all books to have a happy ending (one of my favourite books is A Little Life) but I do need the suffering to feel necessary to the story. This didn't quite feel that way for me, unfortunately.

Slow start but gradually began to care about our main character and understand the people around her. Builds to a lovely finish with terrific author's notes. How does the inclusion (and subsequent exclusion) of the words in a dictionary form societal beliefs, and what does the exclusion of a group's experiences propagate? So much to think about and an enjoyable story as a plus!

The inspiration that drove Williams to write The Dictionary of Lost Words came from when she recognised that the definition of the words found in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary had been decided almost entirely by males and that, by extension, perhaps a female perspective was missing.
The OED was compiled over a period of 30 years by a team of lexicographers, led by Dr Murray. For many years Murray and his team sat in the Scriptorium – really a large shed at the bottom of his garden – painstakingly seeking out and checking quotes to justify the definition of every entry. A dry topic for a novel one would think.
But, whilst sticking to the facts as closely as possible with regard to the process and printing of the dictionary and its authors, Williams’ introduces two additional fictional female characters thereby bringing both a feminine, and, a vivid human dimension to the story.
It is 1887 when we first meet Esme aged 5, daughter of one of the lexicographers, sitting under the table at which they worked, listening to the conversation. Occasionally a scrip [ a postcard-sized piece of paper on which a single word was written, and to which supplementary slips would be attached proving its useage ] might fall to the floor unnoticed. Esme would sometimes pick these up and take them home. And it was in this way her own collection of words starts.
The other main female character in the book is Lizzie, house servant to Dr Murray who looks after Esme, Esme’s mother having died a couple of years previously. Over the next 20 years Esme and Lizzie become inseparable. It is Lizzie’s trunk that becomes home to Esme’s ever growing collection of words which lie at the heart of Williams’ story.
Fine writing blends these fictional characters seamlessly with the real life characters who created the OED whilst also providing a vehicle for Williams to give us an intensely moving human story based around love, loss and, above all, words.
Not only is this a wonderful read it is also enormously informative. If you want to know what a “fascicle” is and an alternative meaning for “bondmaid” then the answer lies within.

An interesting read with a good premise. However, I found the pace far too slow and struggled to stay fully engaged.

A feminist historical fiction that was based on the real events of the composition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The main character grows up under the sorting table in the scriptorium where the proofs are finalised for printing, and decides that the process results in the loss of some language that she finds important enough to preserve. Her own trials and life events influence this, including the expected social proprieties of women, the suffragette movement and world war 1. The accounts of these major events do very well to preserve real fact and biographical details of characters based on those genuinely involved in history. I strongly admire Williams' way with this and the care put into discovering, preserving and conveying the fine historical detail. Even down to Ditte's genuine biographical detail. Definitely recommend to anyone with a love for historical fiction and strong female protagonists.

I wanted to love this because I’m an English teacher and words are everything but I just got so bored at the sheer length and slowness and interminable detail. It was full of ‘moments’ but they were just that - nothing seemed to matter in the sense of the whole.
In the end I gave up I’m afraid and just skipped to the end to see if anyone died dramatically!

I really didn’t know what to expect when I requested this book, but I found it to be incredibly fascinating and intriguing. I very much enjoyed this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for this ARC

A truly captivating and fascinating read! A book was like nothing I've ever read before. It follows Esme her love of words and how the first Oxford English Dictionary was produced. I will be recommending for years to come!

To be honest I have never given much thought to how dictionaries are compiled, especially in the world before computers. The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals it to be a laborious task that involves many small pieces of paper and whim as to which words are included. We see the creation of the first Oxford English Dictionary through the eyes of Esme who saves the excluded and forgotten words to create a dicitionary of the poor and female.

Pip Williams' novel is one set in an era I don't particularly read a lot or know much about beyond school history lessons. It's not my go-to era, however, I absolutely loved this foray into WW1! It took me by surprise. It felt like a really well-researched book, and I loved how Williams wove together Esme's story with the greater historical moments. It did feel like it could be a little slow for some readers, especially in the first parts where it drags a little, but I think this pacing is necessary to get to grips with the concepts presented.

How we all dreamed of finding Narnia .....
And how I wished that Pip Williams would have written two books instead of the one!

The first book: Esme’s childhood. A sensuous depiction of life ‘under the table’ in the Scriptorium. Williams totally understands and conveys a child’s perspective. As secretly, silently, drifting down to her from the preoccupied adult world above and beyond, words become Esme’s treasures and companions. There’s definitely a touch of magical ‘wardrobes’ about her childhood in the Scriptorium - of enchantment and curiosity - all the more exquisite because of its transience. The quest for a true understanding of words such as ‘bondmaid’ define Esme’s journey.
I harbour a slight tinge of sadness that this book was full of possibilities which could have developed along childhood rites of passage ways.
However, inevitably Esme has to grow up.
Then comes the second book - part social commentary on women’s suffrage and war, and part chronicling the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Worthy adult pursuits, and the book diverts into a different novel. Still enjoyable and full of gumption- aunt Ditte - what a chum!
Two books in one. If separate fully developed entities would have earned 5 stars.
Thank you to net galley for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

Beautifully written, The Dictionary of Lost Words is one of those books that unfolds an untold story with captivating details. The first Oxford English Dictionary was created in 1901 only by men, although there were “female volunteers, assistants, spouses, none of whose contributions were acknowledged.”. This is the starting point that converges fiction with history. We meet Esme, and this book follows her as she becomes older. Since a very young age she was allowed to be in the scriptorium, a place reserved for those men who were in the task of creating the first Oxford English Dictionary. The dictionary itself works as a device for the plot, since it's Esme story that is marked by different momentos filled with laughter but also tears.
The characters were well rounded, I really liked Esme's friendship with Lizzie. I just wished a little bit more of a consistent pacing. The first part was really entertaining, but towards the middle... well it felt slow and more like a entaglement of sentimentalism from Esme's perspective. Luckily the last third of the book was back in tracks.
Overall, The Dictionary of Lost Words is a great example of how history and fiction can convey a well crafted story about life, injustice and hope.

From the authors note...Do words mean different things to men and women? And if they do, is it possible that we have lost something in the process of defining them?
It was fascinating to read about the process of compiling the first Oxford English Dictionary which spanned the life of the the fictional main character Esme, the suffragette movement and the Great War.
I loved Esmes relationship with Lizzie which endured all those years and the process Esme went through to collect women's words on the very specific slips used by the OED.
I had recently visited Oxford so could easily picture the library and old ashmolien which she visited over the years.
A very interesting mix of fact and fiction.

If I had to nominate one book out of all the books I've read this year, The Dictionary of Lost Words would certainly be right up there in the top contenders list. It's a slow and gentle novel, but is one that captured my imagination and pulled me into the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary.

You are introduced to Esme in 1888 as she sits beneath her father's desk in the glorified garden shed known as the Scriptorium that is being used to do all the work relating to the Oxford English Dictionary. Over the years, she grows from a young child into a young adult and then ventures out into her adult life. The continual backbone to her life is the creation of the dictionary taking place in that shed next door.

To begin with, Esme takes the occasional duplicate or rejected word home with her, but it isn't long before she's caught taking words and becomes person no grata at the Scriptorium for a while. Esme's life broadens around the skeleton of the dictionary as she struggles with schooling, the suffrage movement, love and loss. But throughout this she remains fascinated by words, particularly the words that never made it into the dictionary; women's words in particular, course and vulgar as they may be. She collects these almost as obsessively as her father checks definitions for the dictionary.

What amazed me was just how much effort had been pit into making this as true to the times and the huge labour of love that was the creation of the first dictionary. It didn't just take years, it took decades with thousands of volunteers sending in words, and the men working directly spending hours cataloguing, sorting and defining. Esme takes this dedication into her own work as she collects definitions and examples for all the various words she is introduced to by the lower class women.

Parts of it were heart-breaking; the impact of World War 1 on the Dictionary creation was particularly powerful. The men in the Scriptorium are largely above the age of conscription or interest, but the men at the printing house were less immune. There are some particularly heart-breaking moments here.

There's a lot of attention to detail in historical accuracy here, but there are also some stunningly strong characters and a beautifully written narrative. It is both the history of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary and a very personal tale of one girl's growth into adulthood, with all the trauma and tribulation that comes with that during a time of great unrest.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the free review copy of this title.

Where do I start? If I say that I had to read this book twice...not because I didn't like it first time around, but because I wanted to make certain I didn't miss anything.
My thanks to Netgalley and Vintage Digital for the reading copy.

A truly wonderful book about Esme and her love of words, and telling the tale of how the first Oxford English Dictionary was produced. Fascinating and captivating, this book was unlike anything I've read before, a true joy to read and one I'll be recommending to many.

A historical fiction novel about words both entices and because of its popularity also made me hesitate.

Background

"Scottish lexicographer Dr James Murray was the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1884. The only word Dr Murray ever conceded had been overlooked was “bondmaid”, meaning a girl bound to serve without wages.

When author Pip Williams discovered this omission, the idea for her debut novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, was born." Jenny Valentish, Guardian

I dive in and find myself often using the dictionary feature on the kindle - yes there are a lot of lost words, or words that are no longer in common use, and one of the main words, and locations, the scriptorium had me confused right from the start - a tin shed where a few learned, self-important men are compiling the first edition of the Oxford dictionary? Even as I write these words, the spellcheck has underlined that word in red.

We are introduced to this place and the main character Esme as she is crawling around beneath the table in this scriptorium, we don't understand a lot about why she is there, as her father appears to be raising her alone without childcare.

A slow build up in the early years, the pace picks up finally when Esme is old enough to go to town and meet a few unconventional women and hears new to her ears, ancient popular but unknown words, and when she meets Tilda, an actor and suffragette her vocabularly and life experience widen even further.

It is the late 1880's, an era of slow progress, both on the dictionary and on the rights of women.

Esme grows up and begins to work with her father, collecting "slips" and the necessary quotations, that give words the right to be part of this grand dictionary.

The problem being that much of a women's world is left out, words that have existed, often for centuries, but have either not been written in any notable works or are deemed not appropriate for polite society. 

Esme has found her calling.

It's an interesting journey through a particular period of history, though I found the character of Esme to be a little two-dimensional compared to some of the secondary characters and one of the characters appears mostly through letters, which rather than illuminate some of the mysteries in Esme's life, just had me asking why this one character if she was so important to her life, wasn't present. The story seemed to lose pace towards the end or perhaps just went on too long, as I began to lose interest.

There are moments of humour, but also predictability - in Esme's 30's her like of words pertaining to women and the poor are discovered by the villainous Dankworth, as the slips flutter to the floor, who should arrive but her literary knight (not yet in armour) Gareth, the compositeur. She ponders the words "manhandled, pillock and git".

A slow consciousness raising and cast of characters across the class divine in Oxford, with the controlled compilation of the Dictionary at the centre of it.