- English literature, New York Times bestseller
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ 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.
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Character
Earnest, classical in form, grave and contemplative.
- earnestironic
- classical in formformally daring
- gravecomic
- contemplativerelentless
- effortlessdemanding
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About the book
- Author
- Pip Williams
- First published
- 2021
- Pages
- 368
- Publisher
- Penguin Random House, Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine Books
- Editions
- 5
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9781473580282
Where to read
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On Open Library, 5 have read it and 58 want to.
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