I have always loved words, the history behind them, how to use them and how they can change meaning. I am the woman who asked for dictionaries for her birthday. This book which is a fictionalised account of the mammoth publication of the Oxford English Dictionary does not disappoint.
Esme spends her childhood in the shadows of the researchers, one of which is her beloved father. She sits under the workbench and watched the feet of the men who are building the dictionary, word by word, definition by definition, all on slips of paper sent in from the world at large. Sometimes words are discarded other times they are lost. Esme the child collects these words. As she grows, she becomes more fascinated with words, and even steals a few, and finally, starts collecting her own words. Words from woman, and words that are spoken and do not appear in print.
Over her lifetime Esme makes a significant contribution to the dictionary, but she has also created her own - Dictionary of Lost Words.
I loved this book and rate it highly!

"Stunning" - extremely impressive or attractive; "Powerful" - having great power or strength.

Sums up this book for me!

An absolute pleasure of a read, the story takes us along the timeline of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, which takes numerous people many decades to compile. The main character, Esme, begins her story under the table in the Scriptorium, where the legs around her belong to those working on the slips of words which will go into the dictionary; we follow her as she grows up amidst the words, while WW1 and the Suffragettes also impact her massively.

I loved the characters, the style, the words, and the fact so much of this is true to history - the context Pip Williams provides at the end of the book is interesting and informative, how she managed to wrap all of this history into such a well crafted story is genius.

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams is a historical fiction novel set between the late 19th century and the first part of the 20th and tells the story of the daughter of a lexicographer working on the first version of the Oxford English Dictionary. In 1901 the word bondmaid was discovered missing from the volumes of the dictionary already completed and Williams has brilliantly written an entire story around this event. She has created a fictional character, Esme Nicoll and entwined her story within the lives of people who worked with Dr Murray on his project to catalogue the English language.

I adored this book, it has been thoroughly researched and the life of Esme is completely seamless with those other real people around her. Through her father, Esme develops a passion for words, collecting and defining them, but as she grows she observes that not every word in use will make it into the much coveted Dictionary. More often than not, its women’s words which are excluded, either those spoken or written in published literature and she embarks on her own project to ensure these words and the voices behind them are never forgotten.

This book is written against a backdrop of women’s suffrage and also World War 1 which leave their mark on each character and are reflected in their outlook, opinions and actions. I thought the characters were written beautifully and were brought to life as I was reading, my favourites being Ditte and Lizzie. This book broke my heart and I shed tears in a few places throughout the story but I highly recommend it to any historical fiction fans. I will be buying a copy for my shelves, it’s one I will be reading again.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK for an advanced digital copy for review.

This tale is not extraordinary, but the ordinariness of the main character in the fascinating world of the Scriptorium makes it compelling. The story of Esme and her relationship with words is fascinating. I could almost smell the paper in the scriptorium and taste the dust, while waiting to discover which slip would be next to catch Esme’s interest.
The book incorporates lovely characters – I particularly liked Lizzie. It’s a slow-burn, but definitely memorable. I felt that some key events in Esme’s life didn’t really get the page space they deserved, but otherwise I enjoyed the story.

4 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this novel.

When I don't find the right words, I am assailed by an indescribable melancholy. As if there is no joy without being able to express it in words. Or sadness. Or astonishment. Or anger. As if everything in my head doesn't exist without the ability to give it a voice.

Then I think about it and I remember that I'm in good company. And that Semiotics, Linguistics and the History of Language have really marked me.

Pip Williams, author of The Dictionary of Lost Words, claims that the genesis of her book is linked to two simple questions: is it possible for words to mean different things depending on the gender of the person using them? And if they do mean different things, is it possible that nuances have been lost in the attempt to define them?

In The Dictionary of Lost Words, we follow the story of Esme, an extremely curious child who spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, surrounded by a group of lexicographers who are busy compiling the first Oxford English Dictionary. Soon Esme begins to question the value of words and to collect all those that are considered unimportant, generally related to the female world or of popular origins.

I really enjoyed the book and not out of pure professional bias. I feel as if I have visited the Scriptorium, sifted through the cards covering every available inch and left various notes. I recognise Esme's curiosity, her reasoning and her concerns as if they were my own.
I enjoyed the blend of fact and fiction. I find it hard to resist books based on facts and characters that really happened and existed. Its topicality is somewhat disarming.
It is a book that intrigued, amazed and moved me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher.

I very much enjoyed The Dictionary of Lost Words and recommend it to anyone interested in words, dictionaries and women's issues. It's shocking to think that just a hundred years ago women were still treated as second class citizens and their contributions to academia and other intellectual pursuits dismissed or overlooked.

Beautifully written and spanning an era of small advances for women, this is a book of sadness and joy. Esme experiences just about everything a woman could experience - of the negative sort anyway - and pushes through it all. I did occasionally find her thefts irritating but that irritation paled into insignificance against background of her story.

Having recently read The Yield by Tara June Winch, I found Lost Words an excellent accompaniment to that book.

An outstanding book, merging fact and a small bit of fiction beautifully. I was living with the main character every step of the way. Thought provoking to the end.

I was sent a copy of The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams to read and review by NetGalley. What a stunning read, I absolutely adored this book! The story of Esme is told in the first person which straight away leads you into her very private world. The writing is beautiful and eloquent without a word out of place – apart from on the Scriptorium floor! Set at a time when women’s lives were limited and expectations few, this novel tackles not only Esme’s journey but that of womankind, all amidst the creation of The Oxford English Dictionary. Words are at the heart of this novel and I am sure that any lover of words and their meanings/creation will delight in this book. I certainly did! Definitely one to keep and re-read.

When I requested The Dictionary of lost words by Pip Williams on NetGalley, I didn’t realise that it has already been published. This book is based on true facts, but the characters are fictious.
The dictionary of Lost words is story how The first Oxford English dictionary came to be. Devised by men working tirelessly for many years to get it produced and the time when women found their voices and it was the start of the suffragist movement. It also included the story of how many people lost their lives in WW1.
I really liked this story of Esme and her discovery of words and their meaning. Growing up and join the Scriptorium to be one of the first women to help in devising the English dictionary. It is beautifully written but can be sow if you do nor love words and their meaning. It would have been five stars but for the ending that I found a little disappointing. Four stars from me.

The Dictionary of Missing words is an enchanting and informative book about the power and control of language and words.
It is an accomplished first novel in which author Pip Williams tells the story of Esme, a bright and inquisitive motherless child whose father is employed as a lexicographer developing the first Oxford English Dictionary. As a child Esme plays under the word-sorting table in the scriptorium, from where she collects dropped and discarded word slips. She keeps these words in a tin box under the maid’s bed and over the years accumulates enough lost words to create an alternative dictionary that represents the language of women and in particular working class women.
Pip Williams has invented her main character Esme, but the book is based on true events around the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary by a team of lexicographers led by Sir James Murray assisted by his 11 children. Murray began compiling the dictionary in 1879. It was unfinished when he died in 1915 and was completed by his fellow editors in 1928.
Williams shows us the women who played crucial roles in creating the dictionary such as Ada Murray and her adult children Hilda, Elsie and Rosfrith, as well as the many women who wrote novels and other works used as evidence for the inclusion and definition of various words.
The book also delves into the issue of the dictionary’s bias and a hierarchy of language. The absence of women in the decision making process meant that the dictionary omitted the way women used words. In addition, the requirement that only the written word was to be included meant that the use of English by the illiterate population wasn’t included either.
Esme’s story covers a time span of more than 100 years: 1882–1989 and moves between Oxford, Bath and Australia. It touches on huge events such as WW1 and the Women’s suffrage movement, but only in so much as they touch on Esme, because this is her story as she moves from timid child, to an accomplished expert in her own right.
This is a book for people who love words and their meanings and for those of us who like to see someone shining a light on the hidden work of women and the lives of the working classes which has so often been overlooked.

What an incredibly moving story. We meet Esme as a young girl in late 19th Century Oxfordshire, sitting under a table in a shed in the Banbury Road while her father works with Dr James Murray and other lexicographers on the Oxford English Dictionary. While there, Esme picks up a slip of paper that falls to the ground and from that moment on is captivated by the collection of new words and their definitions. Woven into the story of Esme’s quest is her childhood and adult experiences, all set against the backdrop of Oxford, suffrage, and WWI.

This story is just beautiful. I love words and live in Oxfordshire, so already had high expectations for this one, but it is so much better than I ever hoped. Esme is a wonderful protagonist, so very real, and she fits in perfectly amongst the real historical figures that we encounter as they compile the dictionary. The supporting cast are perfect and vivid, and the story didn’t move too slowly for me at all. On the contrary, I enjoyed savouring every word – even the ones that Dr Murray may have found “unsuitable”!

This tale serves to remind us of the importance of female scholarship and the suffrage movement in the early 20th century, as well as the fallout of war and the consequences for those left behind. It leaves the reader with the true sense that words can be defined, but it is only by living them that we can truly understand their meaning. I loved this book, and it is one that will stay with me for a while.

My thanks to the author, NetGalley, and the publisher for the arc to review.

The Dictionary of Lost Words is a beautiful and unforgettable book. It is the story of Esme’s life as the only child of a widowed lexicographer who is working on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. She grows up at his feet in the garden shed known as the ‘Scriptorium’ where the work on the dictionary is carried out. The story follows her from the age of 6 as she grows up surrounded by words, their meanings and the rationale for their inclusion in the dictionary. She becomes fascinated by ‘lost words’ that do not make it in and comes to realise that this generally relates to words in common use by women or the lower classes who are less likely to have their speech and explanations documented and evidenced. In secret she begins to collect these words with the help of a much loved servant called Lizzie who looks after Esme throughout her life.

The story is set against the backdrop of political upheaval through the suffragette movement and the First World War. Esme’s inherent curiosity means that we, the reader, meet many perfectly drawn characters and see these events through many different perspectives: male/female, formally educated or not and through the eyes of different classes and trades. Esme’s life is never romanticised nor her privilege forgotten as Lizzie always reminds her in a pragmatic way of their different circumstances.

This is a beautiful story that will stay with me for quite some time. It has a quiet intensity that packs an emotional punch. The characters in the story say very little to each other but each word counts and you are never in any doubt about the strength of their bonds and feelings towards each other. The attention to detail and exploration of the origin of words and phrases is a joy to read. I will be recommending this to everyone I know.

Anyone who loves words and their uses, definitions and shape will adore this book. Wrapped up within an enchanting story of a child who collects lost words, this book will make you go and research the creation of dictionaries which I actually did! Brilliant writing. You will enjoy I guarantee. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for an ARC of this book. Many congratulations to the gifted author

This is quite a 'slow-burn' of a book, which takes us into the world of words through the work of lexicographers at the turn of the twentieth century, and in particular throught the eyes of Esme, a girl who grows up in that world, from underneath the table, collecting fallen slips of words and their meanings, to a word-collector and curator in her own right. Not a particularly promising topic, you might think, and in fact it does have some agonisingly slow parts after the opening of the book, but it definitely blossoms as the focus is widened from the insular Scriptorium to the outside, where we encounter the theatre, the women's suffrage movement and real relationships. Once we start to engage with the narrator and her life, we are carried along by her passions and regrets, leading to a genuinely moving and meaningful ending. A joy to meet her and discover her words.

At the start of this book I was intrigued. As the story developed I just lost faith in it. Other reviewers felt it started off slow and you had to get halfway before the story really got going, but I just couldn't stay the distance. Also I actually liked the start, what I couldn't cope with was the way the genre seemed to shift so that the book I started developed into a preachy commentary that was no where near as engaging or endearing as the promise of its beginning. I just don't like being overtly educated through seemingly politically biased fiction. If you do go for it. As many say the second half of the book is better than the first I'm sure that many more will appreciate it and add to the many fans this book already has, but sadly it just is not for me.

Thank you for my ARC copy!

This is a remarkable book and a great debut novel based on real events. The writing is marvellous and it shows that is well researched. It is a topic that I never thought about reading about. To be honest, I went in blindly and it was a very nice journey. Loved it.

The resilience of these characters warmed my heart. I really liked how Esme's dad was very supportive and helped her to achieve anything. One thing I really enjoyed is he fact that other historical events, that were happening at the same time, are included and discussed.

It is one of my favourites of this year already!

As a child, Esme sits under a table in the Scriptorium as her father and his colleagues define words for the Oxford English Dictionary. She begins to collect words of her own – the ‘lost’ ones that don’t make it to the dictionary. Words spoken by women, by the working classes, by the illiterate, slang words, colloquialisms. These words she hides under the bed of Lizzie, the housemaid, who shares her secret.
This book journeys across many years. We watch Esme grow from a motherless child to a young woman and beyond. She becomes involved in the women’s rights movement. She recognises the inequalities between the sexes and the fact the official dictionary defines women in ways that men are never defined and often in ways that describe a woman’s function in relation to others - maiden, wife, mother. Throughout, she collects and hides her 'women's words.'.
The sentence level writing of this book is extraordinary and I can only imagine how much research went into this. It invokes a place and a time that I knew little about and yet, by the book’s end, I felt intimately involved.
On occasion, I was troubled by the slow pace. Esme is brave for sure, but slow to change or to act and I found this frustrating at times.
But this book is an astonishing achievement and I agree with others here, that it deserves to be read again and again and to be widely shared..

There are some books that are a pleasant way to pass the time, some that inspire dislike almost from the first word, some that are gripping page turners, and a very few that will stay will the reader for ever. This wonderful book is one of the latter and I can’t praise its brilliance and beauty enough. It is the fictionalised story of the first days of the Oxford English Dictionary, through to the final publication of the finished work - a period of many years, and the work of the many fine lexicographers and printers whose devotion allowed it to take shape in the very beginning. It is also the story of Suffragettes, the First World War, and one of love and loss too. The characters and settings are wonderfully drawn and the historical research is immaculate. If you only read one book this year, let it be this one!

A book about words and their power to shape our thoughts and experiences. This is a beautiful tale with real life characters blended with the fictional ones.. As a lover of words I empathised with Esme, I laughed and I cried. Fascinating.
My thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
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This book is about words, their power, and the way that they shape our thoughts and experiences. The book begins when the main character is just a small child tucked amongst the feet of her father as he works as a lexicographer putting together a new dictionary. Though she shouldn't, every so often the young girl, Esme, finds a word - one discarded or deemed irrelevant or that has found its way to her from the hands of a careless lexicographer - and she keeps it, building a collection of secret words in a chest under the bed of the servant girl who works in the house where her father and others are compiling words for a new dictionary. At first the book can seem quite slow paced and like not much is happening but you slowly begin to see that this is the point - the point is to be taken on a journey of words and their meanings as Esme discovers them and links them to her own experiences and, similarly, makes sense of her experiences through the words. If you are looking for a story with some more explicit adventure, some fast-paced ride then this is not the story for you as in many ways it merely depicts the unconventional but largely mundane world of a young girl but if you are looking for a reminder of the joys of words, of how a single word can describe a great wave of feeling or allow you to make sense of some profound experience then this is that reminder. A softer journey than some other book but a journey none-the-less, perhaps mundane in many ways but brought to life and made multi-dimensional through the words Esme finds and the way they allow her to understand her world and her, and others, place in it as well as grow and discover her truth.