The meaning of everything the story of the Oxford English dictionary

• Main Author: Winchester, Simon (Author)
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Oxford University Press 2003
• Subjects: Murray, James Augustus Henry, > Sir, > 1837-1915; Furnivall, Frederick James, > 1825-1910; Coleridge, Herbert, > 1830-1861; English language > History > Lexicography > 19th century; Lexicographers > Biography > Great Britain
• Online Access: Click Here to View Status and Holdings.
• Physical Description: xxv, 260 pages illustrations, ports. 23 cm
• Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-253) and index
• ISBN: 0198607024

Writing with marvelous brio, [the author] first serves up a lightning history of the English language - "so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully unwieldy"--And pays homage to the great dictionary makers, from "the irredeemably famous" Samuel Johnson to the "short, pale, smug and boastful" schoolmaster from New Hartford, Noah Webster. He then turns his unmatched talent for story-telling to the making of this most venerable of dictionaries. In this fast-paced narrative, the reader will discover lively portraits of such key figures as the brilliant but tubercular first editor Herbert Coleridge (grandson of the poet), the colorful, boisterous Frederick Furnivall (who left the project in a shambles), and James Augustus Henry Murray, who spent a half-century bringing the project to fruition. [In this book, he also] illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project - a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, the world's unrivalled uber-dictionary.-Dust jacket.