Oh what a fine book to start of a n ew month!   I picked this up thanks to a recommendation from a friend whose tastes I respect and besides, it had been on my Wish List at Audible for a couple months already (along with about 200 other books).  Whatever –  as it turns out I got the library book because it was available.  

The Dictionary of Lost Words 
by Pip Williams
2021/ 
Read by Pippa Bennett-Warner 11h 11m
Rating:  9.5 / great historical fiction

WWI is a very popular setting for novels of historical fiction. The era included many things in addition to the war itself, women’s suffrage among them. The Dictionary of Lost Words starts out right before the turn of the century and winds up in an epilogue to current day but it’s mostly through the war. The events described are well grounded in verifiable history, but the life of the protagonist along with that of her family and friends are fictional. There are many historical “events” described, and for the main characters to deal with, or be involved with as well as just setting a tone for the era.     

Esme, a young motherless woman has been interested in words from a very young age because her father is a lexicographer working to get the first Oxford English Dictionary published. The year is 1890 or so.  Again, the book was inspired by real events: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_English_Dictionary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette

English women of the Victorian era were unable to vote or do much of anything without a man taking charge of them. In fact women’s suffrage wasn’t granted until 1928 (in the US it was 1920 with some limitations. In France it was 1944! (With the Iroquois it was a pre-Columbian thing – LOL!)

There really isn’t much of a linear plot here – it’s more like a series of events some of which lead to other things – a bit episodic in a way. But Esme is a very bright young girl growing up at the same time and in the same place the Oxford Dictionary is being produced and Esme loves words. It’s almost like a coming of age story, but her circumstances are very different from today’s young women or even those of most young women in the very early 1900s.

Anyway, Williams breaks the grim plot with humor because while still a young woman Esme becomes a lexicographer; learning new words along with definitions and origins is her job. She loves it and wants to advance in her job with that publisher where new words or usages are sent in by the public of almost all economic classes and social levels. The dictionary took four decades to produce. (The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester (1998) is also non-fiction about the Oxford Dictionary.

There are a number of important people mentioned including James Murray, the first editor of the dictionary and Emmeline Pankhurst and others involved are mentioned when Esme gets interested in the suffragettes.  It seems women and other groups have their own words not found in mainstream dictionaries. That becomes Esme’s self-proclaimed job. The whole thing is fascinating . There’s a lot there and I could read it again.

The Oxford Dictionary includes all known and verifiable usages as well as the first known use.