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Author Winchester, Simon.

Title The professor and the madman : a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English dictionary / Simon Winchester.

Publication Info. New York : HarperPerennial, [1999]
©1999

Copies

Location Call No. OPAC Message Status
 Axe Kansas Collection J Schick  423 M964Bw 1999    ---  Lib Use Only
Edition 1st HarperPerennial ed.
Description xiii, 242 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
text txt rdacontent
unmediated n rdamedia
volume nc rdacarrier
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-242).
Contents The dead of the night in Lambeth Marsh -- The man who taught Latin to cattle -- The madness of war -- Gathering Earth's daughters -- The big dictionary conceived -- The scholar in cell block two -- Entering the lists -- Annulated, art, brick-tea, buckwheat -- The meeting of minds -- The unkindest cut -- Then only the monuments.
Summary "The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary began in 1857, took seventy years to complete, drew from tens of thousands of brilliant minds, and organized the sprawling language into 414,825 precise definitions. But hidden within the rituals of its creation is a fascinating and mysterious story - a story of two remarkable men whose strange twenty-year relationship lies at the core of this historic undertaking." "Professor James Murray, an astonishingly learned former schoolmaster and bank clerk, was the distinguished editor of the OED project. Dr. William Chester Minor, an American surgeon from New Haven, Connecticut, who had served in the Civil War, was one of thousands of contributors who submitted illustrative quotations of words to be used in the dictionary. But Minor was no ordinary contributor. He was remarkably prolific, sending thousands of neat, handwritten quotations from his home in the small village of Crowthorne, fifty miles from Oxford. On numerous occasions Murray invited Minor to visit Oxford and celebrate his work, but Murray's offer was regularly - and mysteriously - refused." "Thus the two men, for two decades, maintained a close relationship only through correspondence. Finally, in 1896, after Minor had sent nearly ten thousand definitions to the dictionary but had still never traveled from his home, a puzzled Murray set out to visit him. It was then that Murray finally learned the truth about Minor - that, in addition to being a masterful wordsmith, Minor was also a murderer, clinically insane - and locked up in Broadmoor, England's harshest asylum for criminal lunatics."--Jacket.
Subject Oxford English dictionary.
Murray, James A. H. (James Augustus Henry), 1837-1915.
New English dictionary on historical principles.
Minor, William Chester.
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Veterans -- Biography.
Psychiatric hospital patients -- Great Britain -- Biography.
Encyclopedias and dictionaries -- History and criticism.
Lexicographers -- Great Britain -- Biography.
English language -- Lexicography.
English language -- Etymology.
Veterans. (DNLM)D014728
Patients. (DNLM)D010361
Hospitals, Psychiatric. (DNLM)D006778
Names -- history.
Terms and phrases -- history.
Minor, William Chester. (OCoLC)fst00412394
Murray, James A. H. (James Augustus Henry), 1837-1915. (OCoLC)fst01898763
New English dictionary on historical principles. (OCoLC)fst01361405
Oxford English dictionary. (OCoLC)fst01363319
Encyclopedias and dictionaries. (OCoLC)fst00909533
English language -- Etymology. (OCoLC)fst00911149
English language -- Lexicography. (OCoLC)fst00911326
Lexicographers. (OCoLC)fst00997019
Psychiatric hospital patients. (OCoLC)fst01081030
Veterans. (OCoLC)fst01165710
Great Britain. (OCoLC)fst01204623
United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
Oxford English dictionary.
Murray, James Augustus Henry, Sir, 1837-1915.
Minor, William Chester.
Lexicographers.
English language -- Dictionaries -- History.
English language -- Etymology.
United States -- History -- 1861-1865, Civil War.
Mentally ill -- Great Britain.
New English dictionary on historical principles.
American Civil War (United States : 1861-1865) (OCoLC)fst01351658
Chronological Term 1861-1865
Genre/Form Dictionaries. (OCoLC)fst01423826
Biographies. (OCoLC)fst01919896
Criticism, interpretation, etc. (OCoLC)fst01411635
History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
Dictionaries.
ISBN 006099486X (pbk.)
9780060994860 (pbk.)
9780060839789 (pbk.)
0060839783 (pbk.)
9780060175962
0060175966

 
    
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