What a wonderful, clever read with so many layers that will stay with youlong after you’ve finished reading it. It’s perfect for anyone who loves words and wants to know more about the creation of a dictionary. I look forward to reading more from this author.

A very interesting look into the history of the dictionary and the work behind it, and one woman's love of words. Thank you for the ARC.

Having read Simon Winchester's The Surgeon of Crowthorne, I was very excited to read the story of Esme who could provide a feminine, albeit fictionalised, account of the birth of the OED. In many ways it was every bit I hoped it would be. We start the story with a young Esme who spends her formative years in the Scriptorium where Professor Murray along with a team of lexicographers, including Esme's father, gather words and definitions for the Oxford English Dictionary. Esme hides under the sorting table where she occasionally steals the odd slip of paper with the definition of a word that falls from the table and hides it in a trunk upstairs. Over time, Esme comes to understand that some words are more important than others and words relating to women are often overlooked. To redress this imbalance she starts writing her own dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words. It is then that the story degenerates for a while into really foul words and immoral living that really upset me and led me to regret reading this book. Fortunately, we turn a corner and the story returns to a more even keel and we learn the rest of the life of Esme and the history of the OED.

Apart from the part in the middle which is so upsetting and degrading to women, this is a really enjoyable book. I love the history of the OED and the book does great justice to it. Esme is a warm character and her friend and "bondmaid" Lizzie is in my opinion the best character in the book. In many ways it would have been more interesting if the author had written it from Lizzie's perspective. Overall I enjoyed it, but the digression into foul language and immoral living was sufficiently upsetting that I wouldn't recommend reading it. I feel like the author wrote a beautiful story then got a great black marker pen and scribbled obscenities and almost completely ruined it. Such a shame.

A lovely historical novel with really interesting background of the origins of the dictionary.

Thank you for letting me review this book

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams.

I was not expecting this!
The Dictionary of Lost Words has easily been one of my best reads of 2021.
The title and the cover art has the same kind of vibes as A LOT of books that I've read recently (and also on my TBR pile). So I erroneously assumed that this would also be similar content too.
Wrong!
The Dictionary of Lost Words features an imaginary protagonist in Esme (daughter of one of the male Lexicographers) but is set in the real history of the beginnings of the Oxford English Dictionary. The enigmatic Dr Murray and his family are real, the Scriptorium was a real place, and lots of the events in the book also really happened (I was fascinated, so did a lot of researching after reading this book).
In 1901, a member of the public writes to complain that a word is missing from the dictionary, that word is 'Bondmaid'. This event really happened, but in the book, Esme pockets the word when the slip that it's written on falls from the table. She goes on to collect other lost words and then starts to compile her own 'Words for Women' which she collects from real people in the streets and markets. Many of her words were considered too vulgar for the OED and with other words, she writes her own descriptions of the word's meanings from a woman's point of view, rather than the mostly all-male environs of the Scriptorium.
Wonderful, richly drawn characters (both real and imagined) and an uplifting, flowing and immersive storyline. Just fantastic!


* Thanks to Random House UK and Netgalley for the ARC.

This was such an interesting read!, I found myself rereading parts@so I could fully immerse myself in the story.

I was fascinated by the whole process of putting a dictionary together and how long that process took.

I really enjoyed all the storylines within the book and how they were woven together. I especially liked the timelines shown at the back of the book.

An outstanding debut and a must for any historical fiction fan.

Thank you to #netgalley for the readers copy
#thedictionaryoflostwords

The Dictionary of Lost Words tells the history of the Oxford English Dictionary through the eyes of a fictional character, Esme.

The creation of the dictionary dominates the entirety of Esme’s life and she is right at the centre of the process from childhood. As she grows older, Esme begins to recognise flaws in the dictionary and strives to give a voice to the colourful language of women and the poor who are so often underrepresented. We also see how Esme’s life is shaped by other events in her personal life and of the time including the suffragette movement and the First World War.

While Esme is fictional, many of the other characters and events are not and it was fascinating to find out more about the history of the dictionary, particularly the unrecognised contributions by many women.

This book is a bit of a slow build but the pay off is worth it. It’s not big on drama and always feels grounded in history and reality, it’s this that makes it so interesting and enchanting. The relationships Esme develops with several characters are the heart of the story and really keep you invested!

This book made me think about the lens we use when looking at language and I do love it when a book is not only enjoyable but thought provoking.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What a wonderful and very interesting read!
I was fascinated by the whole process of putting a dictionary together. One doesn't realize how long it takes and how much effort is needed.
The characters were beautifully portrayed and it is unbelievable to think this is a debut author!
This is the story of Esme who grew up in the Scriptorium. A magical place of wonder for her. A place filled with words. But it is also a place where she finds out that some words are just not seen as important; especially if it comes from a woman. Soon she becomes a collector of words and makes it her life ambition to give these words wings.

A beautiful and at times sad story that is based on facts.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House, Vintage for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion

*A big thank-you to Pip Williams, Random House UK, and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
A fine example of historical fiction that held my attention throughout. Herculean effort to prepare the first edition of Oxford English Dictionary described together with some historic events of the period, the beginning of the twentieth century, and blended with good character development. The novel felt real to me, and turned out to be unputdownable, especially due to my personal linguistic interests.

What an absolutely beautiful novel! A big recommend from me! The Dictionary of Lost Words appealed to me simply because I'm a lover of words and books and yet it delivered even more than what I expected.

It is a historical novel set from the late 1800s into World War I, with bits told later on in the 1920s and 80s. Centering around the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, we follow the character of Esme who goes from being a child to a woman while being fascinated by words that make it into the dictionary and the words that are left out (or lost). It is a well-researched novel about the dictionary that includes a feminist message about the words and people that are left out of history and languages.

It's difficult to summarise it, but it touches on the definitions of words, women's place in society, women's suffrage, class issues, war, love, and much more. The only bit I found jarring was about a 1/3 of the way through when she makes youthful mistakes that came out of nowhere to me, but with retrospect I thought it accurately portrayed that part of life when we experiment and make mistakes. Actually throughout the ages, Esme is portrayed so well and so is the historical context.

I absolutely loved it! I'll be getting myself a copy for my library and probably looking at the books Williams mentions in her afterword (which you should definitely read too!).

As someone who loves historical fiction but is often disappointed by it, I’m always delighted when I find a historical novel that lives up to my expectations and reminds me why I love the genre so much. The Dictionary of Lost Words is one of those books and I’m so glad. It follows the creation of the first Oxford English Dictionary from the perspective of Esme, the (fictional) daughter of an assistant lexicographer, as she grows up in the Scriptorium where words are researched and defined. She starts off under the table as a small child, picking up words that are discarded or forgotten, then the novel follows her life as she grows up and the dictionary takes shape. As she grows, the instinct to find forgotten words turns into a fascination with documenting words that are rejected from the dictionary by the male editors, who only accept words that have a written history - which means that words used primarily by women and poor people are left out, no matter how common they are.

The examination of how language is used, who decides what is worth documenting, and how important words are in shaping our perception of the world is woven through the narrative in a beautiful and effortless way. Words are a constant presence in Esme’s life and are the lens through which she understands all that happens in her life: friendships, relationships, losses and hardships. I found the issues of gender and class particularly interesting when they overlapped, especially as it’s often clear that although Esme is documenting the words and lives of her poorer female friends, she cannot fully understand their experiences. I also loved the motif that runs through of words being inadequate to express the complexities of relationships and emotions, no matter how useful and important they are. This becomes especially poignant when the timeline moves into the First World War, the grief and horror of which it is impossible to put into words.

There is no overarching plot, just the story of Esme’s life, the people around her and the words she holds close. I loved this, as all the characters were so interesting and seeing their relationships change over time was lovely. I didn’t particularly enjoy the ending and some of the jumps through time felt a bit jarring, but the writing was always clear and beautiful, with real life events and people rendered so believably and imaginatively that I felt I wasn’t reading a non-fiction account or a novel, just listening to someone tell their life story.

Review for YOU magazine in South Africa

This elegant debut novel is based on the true beginnings of the Oxford English Dictionary. Interspersing real-life figures with fictional characters Williams explores words, in particular the different meanings and significance they can have for men and women.
It’s 1887 and Esme’s kindly father is one of the male scholars working on the project. Little Esme, whose mother is dead, happily inserts herself into his world: the magical Scriptorium, or “Scrippy”, a glorified garden shed where slips of paper containing words and their usages are collated, mulled over and painstakingly edited.
One day, sitting under the table Esme sees a slip containing the word “bondmaid” flutter down to the floor. It marks the beginning of her lifelong journey to find “lost words”, words that have meaning in common parlance particularly, among women, and which culminates most romantically in her own alternative dictionary. To find her words, Esme must stray beyond the limiting confines of the university and embrace the glorious and messy chaos of everyday life.
Against a backdrop of the suffragette movement, this is a love story, a meditation on meaning and motherhood and a lament about the horrors of war. A balm for bookworms.

I found that this book was a little bit to slow to get into, but patience prevails and it's totally worth the wait.
The detail of the book and the thorough research behind it is what makes this book shine, it's fabulously written!

This was a book quite different from any other I have read, and very enjoyable. Tells the story of a young girl and her love of and interest in words. Well worth reading if you are a lover of dictionaries and words

This book is slow, too wordy and long, and the act of reading it felt rather pointless. I had to push myself to make it to the end of the first part, and after that I simply never found enough energy to read any further.

The story starts when the main character is still a little girl. Esme is an incredibly tedious main character, and judging from other reviews, that doesn't change when she grows up. She's also an inconsistent character, portrayed as incredibly smart but at the same time also utterly devoid of any opinion and lacking basic common sense. As a result, by the time she's grown up, she still comes across as a little naive girl.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did - in another writer's hands a book about the history of the OED could have been staid, but Williams made it sing. Retelling this story from a feminist perspective was a stroke of genius, and the fact that it happens to overlap with some pretty big pieces of early 20th century history is also fortuitous, though the events never feel shoehorned into the narrative. Esme is an engaging and relatable protagonist, and I loved that Williams didn't shy away from discussing the less savoury parts of her life, such as her pregnancy and subsequent depression. Anyone who is interested in words or women's history will love this book.

It may sound paradoxal but I can't find the worlds for expressing how much I loved this story.
It's poignant, engrossing and fascinating. It's the story of a woman but it's also the story of a time when women had to fight in order to be taken into account.
The style of writing and the storytelling are excellent, I loved the well researched and vivid historical background.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Such an interesting window into how dictionaries were made, a little longwinded in places but an enjoyable read

I thoroughlt enjoyed this very different book. The story was set at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. Intriguing to read, following the life and a young girl and the times she lived in. But the interest was established around the 'dictionary' that was being created as well as her life story. Very interesting and original story. Well worth a read.

This beautiful book follows Esme, a child who grows up with her dictionary compiling father who works in a garden shed dubbed the Scriptorium. Esme collects the words that get lost of discarded and later creates a dictionary of lost words. As I love words and books, this novel intrigued me and I hoped to enjoy the story and learn lots of new words myself. I was pleased on both counts. The novel had, for me, a slightly haunted air and I had to read it in smaller chunks as the prose felt rich and required reflection. If you are looking for a book that's beautiful, evocative and teaches you as well as transporting you, I highly recommend this.