Book-the Professor and the Madman

The Professor and the Madman is a fascinating look at the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which is the ultimate dictionary of the English language, and took decades to create. In creating the dictionary, the editor, Dr. James Murray, asked for help from people all over the English speaking world, to submit word lists, with definitions and quotations showing how the word is used.

He received thousands of these lists from Dr. Minor, most of them very helpful to the creators of the dictionary. But Dr. Minor, was not just fascinated by words, he was also quite insane, and was in an English mental hospital after a paranoid delusion made him kill an innocent man.

Simon Winchester weaves this tale very nicely. Not only telling the story of these two men, but with the history of the making of this huge dictionary as well, a gargantuan task. He tells the story with a reverence for words, and a droll sense of humor. My only quibble is sometimes he speculates a little too much about what things are unclear in the historical record. But it is a minor quibble.

The book not only traces the origins of dictionaries, but of words, and with Dr. Minor, the origins of mental illness. It is a very good book, especially for those who have an interest in words. The human story parallels the story of the OED, and the tale that comes out of it is pretty remarkable.