The Dictionary of Lost Words

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ΓÇó REESEΓÇÖS BOOK CLUB PICK ΓÇó ΓÇ£Delightful . . . [a] captivating and slyly subversive fictional paean to the real women whose work on the Oxford English Dictionary went largely unheralded.ΓÇ¥ΓÇöThe New York Times Book Review ΓÇ£A marvelous fiction about the power of language to elevate or repress.ΓÇ¥ΓÇöGeraldine Brooks,New York Times bestselling author of People of the Book Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curiousshe spends her childhood in the Scriptoriuman Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young EsmeΓÇÖs place is beneath the sorting tableunseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip andlearning that the word means ΓÇ£slave girlΓÇ¥ begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men. As she grows upEsme realizes that words and meanings relating to womenΓÇÖs and common folksΓÇÖ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages. Set during the height of the womenΓÇÖs suffrage movement and with the Great War loomingThe Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrativehidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual eventsauthor Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightfullyricaland deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world. WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARD