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Interesting! Sometimes a little too detailed to keep me interested but I finished it anyway. What an amazing concept, though...writing a dictionary. It took around 60 years to complete. Imagine that. Also imagine not being able to look up a word or information on the internet.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Something so commonplace that is used almost daily and I have never thought of what it took to create such a comprehensive text that we all take for granted. If the immense undertaking of creating a publication of word meanings, their origins, pronunciation, and use wasn't enough, the story also has a peculiar contributor - Dr. Minor who spent the majority of his life in an insane asylum.
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Jan 09, 2021
Jgrace
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really liked it
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The Professor and the Madman:
A Tale of Murder,Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary - Winchester
Audio performance by the author
4 stars
Much of this interesting history reads like a novel. It didn’t have the fictionalized melodrama of the movie that I watched recently, but it kept my attention from beginning to end. The audiobook, read by the author, was very well done, but I enjoyed the use of OED definitions more in the text copy.
It didn’t surprise me that Dr. Minor became o ...more
A Tale of Murder,Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary - Winchester
Audio performance by the author
4 stars
Much of this interesting history reads like a novel. It didn’t have the fictionalized melodrama of the movie that I watched recently, but it kept my attention from beginning to end. The audiobook, read by the author, was very well done, but I enjoyed the use of OED definitions more in the text copy.
It didn’t surprise me that Dr. Minor became o ...more
This is a fascinating story about a mentally disturbed individual and his impact on the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. The story encapsulates a commentary of the time, conditions during the Civil War, the treatment of psychiatric disorders and the extraordinarily manually intensive work that went into compiling what is arguably the greatest dictionary (of English) of all time. I found it incredibly eye-opening that an institutionalized mental patient had some of the timeliest and sub
...more
Many times in my childhood my punishment consisted of having to read a dictionary. Who knew the real interest was in how and who wrote the first comprehensive dictionary? A British college professor led a team of volunteers and experts. The volunteer with the most contributions was an American living in England. But what an American! He was a medical doctor who lived in an aslyum because under the effect of delusions he had gunned a man down in the streets. Very interesting, and another view int
...more
Apr 22, 2011
Janet Morris
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