The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

Author:Simon Winchester [Winchester, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: General, United States, Biography, Biography & Autobiography, Psychiatric Hospital Patients, Great Britain, English Language, English Language - Etymology, Encyclopedias and Dictionaries - History and Criticism, United States - History - Civil War; 1861-1865 - Veterans, Lexicographers - Great Britain, Minor; William Chester, Murray; James Augustus Henry - Friends and Associates, Lexicographers, History and Criticism, Encyclopedias and Dictionaries, English Language - Lexicography, Psychiatric Hospital Patients - Great Britain, New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Oxford English Dictionary
ISBN: 9780060839789
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1998-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Eliza Merrett knew very little of books—indeed, she was barely literate. But when she saw how keenly Doctor Minor collected and cherished his old volumes, and when she listened to his querulous remarks about the delays and costs of the postal service between London and Crowthorne, she made an offer to collect his orders for him, and bring them down on her visits. And so it happened that, month after month, Mrs. Merrett began delivering packages, wrapped in brown paper and sealed with twine and wax, from the West End’s great book emporiums, like Maggs, Bernard Quaritch, and Hatchards.

The delivery system, such as it was, probably remained in place for only a few months—Mrs. Merrett eventually took to drink and apparently lost all interest in the curious and eccentric unfortunate. But the system appears during its brief life to have led what was undeniably the most serendipitous event in William Minor’s otherwise melancholy life.

For it was in the early 1880s that he stumbled across the first of James Murray’s famous appeals for volunteers, which asked for interested parties to indicate that they might be prepared to work on the new dictionary. Murray first published his appeal in April 1879 and had two thousand copies printed and circulated by booksellers: One would almost certainly have found its way, probably fairly soon after its distribution, into one or more of the packages that Mrs. Merrett brought to Minor at the asylum.

The eight pages explained in very broad terms what was likely to be wanted. First there were Murray’s own suggestions for the kind of books that needed to be read:

In the Early English period up to the invention of Printing so much has been done and is doing that little outside help is needed. But few of the earliest printed books—those of Caxton and his successors—have yet been read, and any one who has the opportunity and time to read one or more of these, either in the originals, or accurate reprints, will confer valuable assistance by so doing. The later sixteenth-century literature is very fairly done; yet here several books remain to be read. The seventeenth century, with so many more writers, naturally shows still more unexplored territory. The nineteenth-century books, being within the reach of everyone, have been read widely; but a large number remain unrepresented, not only of those published during the last ten years while the Dictionary has been in abeyance, but also of earlier date. But it is in the eighteenth century above all that help is urgently needed. The American scholars promised to get the eighteenth-century literature taken up in the United States, a promise which they appear not to have any extent fulfilled, and we must now appeal to English readers to share the task, for nearly the whole of that century’s books, with the exception of Burke’s works, have still to be gone through.

After this Murray listed rather more than two hundred specific authors whose works, in his view, were essential reading. The list

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.