Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams *****

The first edition of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) was published after 40 years in 1928. As a toddler, Esme Nicoll, played under the table where the men worked on the OED. When she grew up, she had a place at that table. In addition to OED, these years included women’s suffrage and World War I. This book is Esme’s story.

Esme soon realized that the OED only recorded the words of educated white, Victorian men. She made her life’s work to record the words of the rest of society, especially women—a dictionary of lost words. A beautiful story of women, dictionaries, and libraries.

Embroidery, proof of existence: “I guess I like to keep me hands busy,” Lizzie said. For a moment I forgot what I’d asked. “And it proves I exist,” she added. “But that’s silly. Of course you exist.” ... “I clean, I help with the cooking, I set the fires. Everything I do gets eaten or dirtied or burned—at the end of a day there’s no proof I’ve been here at all.”

Esme becoming a reader at the Bodleian: “Ordinarily, it would not be possible for you to become a reader, Esme. You are neither a scholar nor a student. But it is my intention to convince Mr. Nicholson that the Dictionary will be realized far sooner if you are permitted to come here and check quotations on our behalf.” “We can’t just borrow the books, Dr. Murray?” He turned and looked at me above his spectacles. “Not even the Queen is permitted to borrow from the Bodleian. Now, come.”

Esme recording quotations for her dictionary: “What did you write?” Lizzie asked. I read it to her and she reached for her crucifix. I wondered if I’d upset her. “Nothing I ever said has been written down,” she finally said. Then she got up and cleared the table.

The future: “Maybe it’s about time I became ‘more worldly,’ as you put it. Things are changing. Women don’t have to live lives determined by others. They have choices, and I choose not to live the rest of my days doing as I’m told and worrying about what people will think. That’s no life at all.”

When pregnant Esme’s friend Tilda urged her to marry the baby’s father, Bill: She held me a little tighter as she said it, and I didn’t move away. I’d thought about it. I’d imagined it. In my heart I was certain that Bill would do the right thing if he knew. That Tilda would make sure of it. I spoke as slowly and carefully as Lizzie just had. “I don’t love him, though. And I don’t want to be married.”

Small talk: Sarah never insisted on conversation and was unusually clumsy with small talk—she once responded to a comment on the weather by explaining the relationship between barometric pressure and rain.

Emse’s friend Lizzie appraises Esme’s boyfriend: We watched as he drank it down. When he finished, he took the glass to the sink and rinsed it. Lizzie looked at me in astonishment. … When Gareth left, Lizzie sat me down and washed my face. She brushed out my hair and rolled it back into a bun. “Never met a man like him,” she said. “Except maybe your da. He also rinses his cup.”

Esme to the Bodleian librarian when he refused to accept her book. “You are not the arbiter of knowledge, sir. You are its librarian.” I pushed Women’s Words across his desk. “It is not for you to judge the importance of these words, simply to allow others to do so.”

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