The Professor and the Madman

by Simon Winchester

The first word to be tried in this way was a deceptively simple one (to the extent that any individual word is simple compared to any other). It was a word that was due to be included in the dictionary’s second fascicle, or part, being readied to be printed and published in the later summer of 1885. Please inspect your word lists, wrote a subeditor, to see if you can find in them references to the word art, and to all its derived forms. The letter went directly to Doctor Minor at Broadmoor, as his invitational letter had suggested. Whichever of Murray’s subeditors first asked him the question in reply had no ideas about the man from whom an answer was sought. For many years thence no one in the Scriptorium was to learn anything about him, except for the undeniable truth that he was very good at his job, very quick, and on his way to becoming an indispensable member of the great new dictionary team. Art was to be his first test.