I adored this book, it took me longer than normal to read as to me it was a dip in and out of book, I loved reading a ‘letter’ every couple of days.

Amazing story and a great companion to The dictionary of lost words by Pip Williams. A really interesting read

I have better things to do with my life than plough through the remaining 75% of this book. It is dull and I would rather watch paint dry. The creation of the first dictionary has been done before in better ways. I cannot give it any stars

Who knew the history of a dictionary could be so riveting? Oglivie has pulled off something extraordinary in bringing to life an institution and making it newly relevant.

Anyone who loves words and enjoys reading will surly enjoy this book about the lives of some of the many contributors of words to the OED. Affectionately written by a lady who knows so much about her subject and communicates her obsession with words in a lively and entertaining way. Highly recommended.

After reading Pip Williams' books which fictionalise the teams working on the OED and at Oxford University Press this was a wonderful companion read as it was all about the real people writing the Dictionary.

I had no idea before reading this what a collaborative process it had been, and possibly ever the first attempt at crowd sourcing research - something that has become really popular of late,

Ogilvie's structure of picking out intriguing stories and contributors by alphabetical theme made this a wonderful book for dipping in and out of during tea breaks and has made me look at the Dictionary in a whole new light.

The Dictionary People is a fascinating book. It started when Sarah Ogilvie discovered the address books kept by James Murray during the original Oxford Dictionary project. The Oxford Dictionary was a crowdsourced project. The dictionary’s methods were borrowed, half a century later, from those used in Germany and France. Continental philology had already produced considerable works on the continent and Murray could learn from that, particularly from the work of the Grimm brothers. Murray relied on a large number of contributors, and kept their details in his address books.
Sarah embarked on a journey to find out more about all these contributors and her book is a great way of giving them credit for all their work and contributions. This crowd of contributors is super interesting. People from all over the world, some very educated, inventors, astronomers, and some less learned, but all sharing the obsessive habit of reading, collecting words and writing the precious slips that Murray would receive and use to build the dictionary. The book also tells us about Murray’s life, his own dedication of a lifetime to the dictionary, and how he embarked his wife and children in the adventure.
Sarah Ogilvie has worked for 8 years to create this book. I did not read it as a novel and read it little by little because it is so full of information and details that it takes time to enjoy it. But every time I put my nose in the book, I was fascinated by the way this whole dictionary was built, as well as the way Sarah Ogilvie discovered so much about the people and stories around it.
Congratulations to Sarah for this unique book. I definitely recommend it to all the lovers of words, of the English language and history.

This book has a lovely premise – the stories (in alphabetical order, of course) of a number of contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary – the writers behind the hundreds of thousands of contribution slips sent into the OED with definitions and source materials.

Some of the stories are fascinating, and the sheer number of contributions that some individuals managed to amass is incredible; however about halfway through I found things got a bit samey – too many vicars and spinsters of the parish with very similar backgrounds, which made me lose interest.

This was a delightful read which I could not put down. I had an understanding of how the OED came to be organised and which words were included from a variety of sources, including the movie 'The Professor and the Madman' and the excellent novel by Pip Williams 'The Dictionary of Lost Words.' Sarah Ogilvie's book has fleshed out my knowledge and I was captivated by her glimpses into different moments in time.

Her obsession and joy at being able to research this project were clear - and I felt envious of her archival research opportunities as they just sound quite wonderful! I enjoyed reading about a wide range of people who contributed to the dictionary and I now have even more respect for Murray (amongst others) at their huge undertaking. It is quite amazing to think they they ever pulled off the publication of this amazing resource. I was surprised by the sheer number of volunteers who became quite obsessed with their endeavours, and without whom, the OED would not be the rich resource that it is today.

This is definitely a book to dip in and out of as Ogilvie brings to life so many quirky characters with her meticulous research.

An interesting read but one I had to tackle a few chapters at a time. I previously read, and throughly enjoyed , The Dictionary of Lost Words. A novel based on the writing of the OED. The Dictionary People helped flesh out the stories of the volunteers who were invaluable to its publication.

The Dictionary People by Sarah Ogilvie is about the thousands of volunteers around the world who helped compile the first Oxford English Dictionary in the second half of the 19th century. Ogilvie recounts this impressive crowd-sourcing exercise in the most appropriate format: 26 chapters from A for archaeologists to Z for zealots. While some volunteers were from literary or middle-class circles typically associated with compiling a dictionary, others came from more surprising backgrounds, with Ogilvie identifying three murderers, a pornography collector and residents of Broadmoor asylum among the most dedicated to the task. Volunteers would read books around certain subject areas and were asked to send paper slips with “a quotation for every word that strikes you as rare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, peculiar or used in a peculiar way” to the Dictionary’s editor, James Murray, who worked in his Scriptorium shed in Oxford. ‘The Dictionary People’ is a fascinating blend of social history and lexicographical nerdiness. Many thanks to Penguin Random House, Vintage Books for sending me a review copy via NetGalley.

I found this fascinating and was unable to put the book down. This was full of so much information from how the OED began, the process involved with volunteers and how all of them came from such diverse backgrounds, cultures and nationalities. This is book to read and then to browse frequentlyin order to just enjoy the separate sections individually. As I read I highlighted so any parts and my dear husband kept being bombarded with new information that I found so interesting. I personally had no idea of how a dictionary evolved,simply taking it for granted as a great and valuable tool . The amount of information regarding the entries, the contributors and how the work tself was distributed to the extent of saving postage from international contributors.
The sections were to me very well organised and I thought that they had been very well described for the reader. Each chapter was intense with names of the volunteers, the number of entries and often the effect on ther private lives that this work bought.
I personally am putting this one my Christmas list as i want to read so much more about all the highlights that I have already made and I am sure that by reading it a second time and doing more research myself I will be totally absorbed over the festive perios and onwards into the New Year.
This book will apeal to anyone who loves words and how they are often formed or even discovered.

This is my perfect type of book, all about words, peppered with lots of information and all presented in an alphabetical list! I’ve been interested in etymology and the creation of the dictionary for a while and so when I heard about this book I was keen to read it. Whereas most books have centred around Murray and the paid workers behind the dictionary, this book took a more novel approach and looked into just who were the everyday people who sent in contributions. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was created by people from all over the world sending in ‘slips’ with words on them and quotations with how these were used. I think a lot of people would expect it mainly to be academics who would have taken an interest but as Ogilvie illustrates that the volunteers were as varied as the words themselves. While it would be impossible to list every single person and information about them the book is split into alphabetical chapters which all take a theme and show more detailed case studies within each one. I really enjoyed reading this both from a point of view of the OED but also more broadly of social history of the time. A brilliant book for word nerds!

The Dictionary People is well-researched and informative nonfiction compiling the contributors of OED, Oxford English Dictionary, some mentioned in the prefaces in each section of OED (fascicles) while some not that author found mentioned in Dr James Murray’s address book of volunteers.

The Dictionary People started with the preface- how the author found Murray’s address book and how that motivated the author to find more about the volunteers mentioned in the address book that took her on a wild journey of finding out about people who contributed to the dictionary and made it successful with its all-encompassing and all-embracing vision.

It was interesting to know how this biggest crowd-sourcing project wouldn’t have been possible without thousands of volunteers (exactly around 3000) who gave their precious time and worked indefatigably for the dictionary without any payment and out of goodwill and how we might not know about them (or at least those who are not mentioned in prefaces) without Murray’s methodical notes in his address books and some of the letters he kept that mentioned where they lived, what they read, time frame they worked for dictionary and also some of the personal information that included marriage dates, friendships, and deaths.

I was surprised Murray worked with such small payments (£ 9000 for ten years. so he gets £900/year and that didn’t include expenses for the Dictionary like papers, books to send to volunteers, and payments for staff working under him!) strict timelines and the pressure of completing the dictionary doing many things like editing the words and verifying their sources, living with his big family, keeping in touch with volunteers, follow-ups about the books he sent and slips they sent back, and many other things. It’s just sad he didn’t get to see him completed.

The Dictionary People shows the author’s enthusiasm that is quite infectious and it’s obvious from the very first chapter how much the author loved the dictionary and its history and how much she researched about the volunteers and contributors to write this book, how difficult it might be to find information about people who aren’t alive now and find the documents related to people worked for the dictionary that started in 1857 till its completed in 1928 covering seventy years of its making. It sure is no small feat and the author’s efforts are commendable.

However, I think the execution could be better or more interesting. While the idea of including volunteers in A to Z format- with each alphabet titled contributors’ professions/ hobby / characteristics like A for archeologists, C for Cannibles, murderers, lunatics and so on… some alphabets were regardless of hobbies like B for Best contributors and H for Hopeless contributors.. – was very interesting and stories of the volunteers were very well represented in just few pages, I found the connections between different volunteers under the same alphabet was not smooth. Sometimes it went off track including the timelines and Murray’s struggle and other bits that weren’t about the particular volunteer and hobby the author was discussing.

I agree with what one of the reviewers said, sectioning the book as per profession or hobbies is the problem. I could see writing book instead with only males / females / queer contributors could have made it easy to follow. Also, there wasn’t any chronological order also made it hard to follow who worked in which timeline.

As my copy is eARC I didn’t have an appendix with a list of contributors discussed in the book that I would have liked to refer to later and I think it should be included as there was so much information, so many names mentioned that I never could tell who was discussed in which alphabet.

It is impossible to remember everything in every chapter and no reader, nor even an enthusiast of the dictionary can read this in one go with this much information. It took me almost a month to read this book and if you even ask me to list just the title of all A to Z letters I would have to refer to the Content list in the beginning.

I also found some of the stories a bit boring especially when I was nearing the end of the book. (It might be partially because I just wanted to finish the book) It is often a little tedious to read some chapters which made me use Murray’s initial choice of word for dictionary for this book as well, exhaustive.

But yes, for nerds who love OED and is fascinated by the dictionary (not just words), its making, the methods they used, who made it successful and stories of many volunteers about how they came to be part of the dictionary would surely enjoy reading The Dictionary People.

Overall, The Dictionary People is informative, fascinating and well-researched nonfiction about the contributors of OED, Oxford English Dictionary, without whom success of OED would not have been possible. However, this often was exhaustive read and dull at some points. So it might not be for everyone.

When Sarah Ogilvie was saying goodbye to her job and colleagues at the Oxford University Press, she wandered into the basement where the Oxford English Dictionary archive was kept and opened an old dusty box at random. In it, she found James Murray’s address book. Murray was the editor of the OED from 1879 to 1915 and this book (and two other similar volumes) listed all the contributors during that time. Ogilvie’s book, The Dictionary People, tells us about some of these three thousand people.

Ogilvie states “The OED was a project that attracted those on the edges of academia.” That’s very kind. On the basis of Ogilvie’s research, I’d describe some of them as nuttier than a packet of peanuts. A contributor would read a book, either provided by Murray or one they had obtained themselves; and then pick in a “slip”. This was a 4 x 6 inch piece of paper upon which they would give the details of the book and a word from the book that “strikes you as rare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, peculiar, or used in a peculiar way.” That sounds perfectly sane and useful. However, Dr Thomas Austin Jr submitted 165,061 slips over ten years, closely followed by William Douglas with 151,982 over twenty-two years. Austin averaged (averaged!) 45 slips a day if he worked seven days a week. Ogilvie’s research shows that neither of them enjoyed great mental health.

The editor prior to Murray was Frederick Furnival. It’s fair to say he was rather disorganised. The novelist, Charlotte Yonge, subedited the letter “N” for Furnival in 1864 but stopped working for him a few years later. In 1877, Furnival wrote to her asking for the work she’d performed on N. Her reply was just one sentence: “You must have my Ns somewhere for I put them all into their sack and sent them back to you […]” 140 years later, she might have added “Plonker!” When Furnivall handed the editorship to Murray, two tons of paperwork were transported from the Furnivall household to Chez Murray. In addition to the paper, the sacks contained “mice, alive and dead”.

Ogilvie’s book is an A-Z, starting with A for archaeologist; then B for Best Contributor; through to Z for Zealots. (With C for Cannibal and M for Murderers – it takes all sorts!) Each letter is simply a peg upon which to hand tales about some of the contributors she has researched. It’s brilliant and would be an excellent Christmas present for anyone interested in how the world communicated before telephones and the Internet. Although the letter D (for Dictionary Word Nerds) does contain some of the more shocking words in the English language. James Dixon wrote to Murray, enclosing a small sealed envelope marked PRIVATE inside a larger one, suggesting he shouldn’t include the word condom because it was obscene. [N.B. that wasn’t one of the words I had in mind when I mentioned the raunchy ones above, though.]

The book gives an insight into the world of Victorian academia, with its petty jealousies; the altruistic behaviour of people who were never paid a penny by Murray and the OUP; and the huge effort involved in putting together a dictionary based upon references stored on slips of paper. Ogilvie’s research into the contributors shows that far more women contributed than was realised previously. They might sit a home in the evening with a candle, reading books and writing slips: a solitary diversion after a day’s caring for an elderly relative, perhaps. Or they might have been Margaret Murray, reading outside at sunrise in Kolkata, before the day became too hot. Those slips are still sometimes consulted today as the OED is maintained – phenomenal!

#TheDictionaryPeople #NetGalley

Whilst this book does delve into the people who helped assist with making dictionaries, I found it didn’t hold the readers interest very well. For example one lady is described as having odd reading material which helped her see words written down which weren’t in the common vernacular, which is factual, but isn’t too interesting. It felt as though the book could be half the size, and twice as interesting, if the author had written it more list style, I.e Mr Smith donated over X no of words to the dictionary. Living from X-X he found most of his words by X which mainly came about due to X. Instead we have long rambling sentences which lose the readers interest mid flow

The Dictionary People is an A to Z exploration of the people who contributed to the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary in the late 19th century and early 20th century. There's so much research in this book and so many interesting nuggets of information, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Five stars for lexicographical nerdiness!

Goodness, this is a real labour of love! the author tells us she spent 8 years researching the topic, and her delight in her findings really shines out.
Hopefully her hard work will give readers (like me) a real appreciation of the enormity of creating a dictionary.
It's definitely a book to savour and dip in and out of and I really enjoyed the detail of people's lives, many of whom were explorers and thought nothing of going off to a remote country and living there for a while, but always mindful of collecting new words!
I think it may be better as a physical book so the illustrations can be fully appreciated and it's easier to return to a specific entry.
Thank you to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

The Dictionary People is an absolute delight. I was intrigued from start to finish and have learned so much from a book packed with detail. Sarah Ogilvie has taken such a unique slant; identifying individuals who made contributions to the OED when it was first compiled. I had a vague understanding of how it was put together, but this book explains that it was an immense Rita’s k which took years. It’s fascinating and the more so because as beneficiaries generations on, we all take a dictionary for granted.

I’ve always loved words and a treasured Christmas present some 60 odd years ago was a copy of the pocket OED…which I still have. I spent hours reading words, with one leading to another and Sarah Ogilvie’’s book is rewarding in a similar way. After the introduction, it’s set out alphabetically with each letter dedicated to a theme and person. It’s an eclectic mix of individuals from all walks of life and social backgrounds. I really can’t rave enough about this book and on publication, it’ll be on my Christmas present list. Fascinating, compelling and true genius. Love it.

I have read several books over the years about the compilation of the OED - nonfiction as well as fiction. I wondered how this book by Sarah Ogilvie would compare. Very well, is the answer to that question. The idea of looking at the contributors rather than the compilers was excellent and this book is full of fascinating informaiton about people who mostly would never have been written about. I loved it. Full of fascinating facts and trivia t delighted me on almost every page. Two nonfiction books mentioned in this book that I highly recommend if you enjoy this one are both by Simon Winchester - The Meaning of Everything and The Surgeon of Crowthorne. A lovely novel based on the OED is The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. With thanks to NetGalley, the publishers and the author for an e-ARC of this title to read and review. It's fabulous!