Peninsula Records and Books
The Dictionary of Lost Words - Pip Williams
The Dictionary of Lost Words - Pip Williams
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Title: The Dictionary of Lost Words
Author: Pip Williams
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams is a beautifully written historical novel that weaves together language, identity, and the female experience. Set during the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, the story follows Esme, a young girl who collects words discarded by the male lexicographers of the time. As she grows up, Esme realises that words and the stories they represent are often shaped by those in power, leaving many voices – particularly women’s – unheard. Through Esme’s journey, Pip Williams explores how language and meaning shape our understanding of the world.
Book Club:
Reece's Book Club
Read if you like:
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
Album Match:
Joni Mitchell - Blue
Blurb
Blurb
In 1901, the word bondmaid was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.
Motherless and irrepressibly curious, Esme spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers are gathering words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary.
Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day, she sees a slip containing the word bondmaid flutter to the floor unclaimed. Esme seizes the word and hides it in an old wooden trunk that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.
Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women's experiences often go unrecorded. She begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.
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