The volunteers’ duties were simple enough, if onerous. They would write to the society offering their services in reading certain books; they would be asked to read, and make wordlists of all that they read, and would then be asked to look, super-specifically, for certain words that currently interested the dictionary team. Each volunteer would take a slip of paper, write at its top left-hand side the target word, and below, also on the left, the date of the details that followed: These were, in order, the title of the book or paper, its volume and page number, and then, below that, the full
...more
