The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary took 71 years to produce, with an ever-changing team of lexicographers and volunteers collecting, defining, and providing examples of words. This debut novel is set in that world, focusing on Esme, who grew up at the feet of her father, a lexicographer who worked in the Scriptorium. As a child, Esme stole slips of words and definitions that had fallen under the table and gotten pushed into corners. But as she grows older, Esme realizes that, given who collects the words and the stringent rules of inclusion (must be published in a book), there are hundreds, if not thousands, of words used by women in everyday vernacular that are being ignored. Against the backdrop of the OED's creation and the British fight for women's suffrage, Esme begins to create her own dictionary of lost words.
Not only is this a lovely historical fiction novel (I always wondered about the mechanics of creating a dictionary from scratch), but it's also a pointed criticism of the inherent bias of dictionaries and other reference works that have a homogeneous group of creators. The only thing that would have made this better is if Esme's dictionary had been based on an actual publication. But alas, we can't change history; we can only learn from it.
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