Dictionary of Lost Words

Biography

• Philippa "Pip" Williams was born in London, grew up in Sydney, and now lives in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills.

• Her debut novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, was a New York Times bestseller and a Reese’s Book Club pick.

• The Bookbinder is her second novel.

• Born: 1969 (age 54 years), London, United Kingdom

Biography (from Library of NSW)

• She was born in London in 1969 to a Brazilian mother who worked part-time as a hairdresser and a Welsh father, a computer analyst. The family moved to Australia in 1972. She has a younger sister who is now a social worker. Her father was a big reader who wrote children’s stories and joke books. He was also, she says, a feminist, who had "no limitations on what he expected of my sister and me."

• Williams grew up on Sydney’s Northern Beaches and went to Mackellar Girls High School. She started writing—"terrible poems"—when she was eight. She started to keep diaries as a teenager and writing became an outlet for her emotions. "Every time I was emotionally frustrated, I would just write it out." She also liked to write different ideas down on pieces of paper and still has the old Indian kettle in which she used to keep them.

• Her first piece of published work was a poem, "Fifteen," written at age 15 after a fight with her parents who wouldn’t let her go out. She fled to her room in tears, wrote the poem and sent it to her favourite magazine, Dolly¸ which paid her 15 dollars for it. She muses that this may have been a turning point in her writing career.

Biography (from Library of NSW)

• At 17, Williams learned that she was dyslexic. The diagnosis explained a lot. For years, teachers had been saying that she was bright and verbal in class but these qualities were not reflected in her written work. She was often put on detention for her poor spelling and forced to write out words she had misspelt 10 times, all to no avail because she would spell the same word differently. She was a slow but enthusiastic reader—she loved the then-popular Trixie Belden books and read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe 25 times. She says she is still a slow reader, but a voracious one.

• Williams also had dysgraphia, which makes it physically difficult to hold a pen. Both these conditions have made her reflect on the connection between words and creativity. "I’ve come to realise words are just tools which enable you to create. They’re not necessarily part of creation."

• She agrees there may be a connection between her dyslexia and the subject matter of her novels--books and words. "I was like one of those Olympic swimmers who started swimming because he had asthma.

Biography (from Library of NSW)

• My dad knew I had difficulties spelling, so he gave me three dictionaries." She is at pains to emphasise that her parents never corrected her spelling and says, "That is the worst thing you can do with a creative child; it’s so discouraging."

• After finishing school, Williams took a gap year in Europe. In 1988 she returned to Australia and enrolled in a Bachelor of Science, Psychology and Sociology at what was then Mitchell College of Advanced Education in Bathurst (now part of Charles Sturt University). "I chose to do something which really interested me, psychology, because I’m very interested in human nature," a fascination that is evident in her novels, which explore relationships as much as they do ideas.

• Williams had always been attracted to social justice and wanted to work to improve equality, particularly for those living with a disability and for women, especially older women.

Biography (from Library of NSW)

• She did her PhD in Public Health at Adelaide University and worked for many years as an academic researcher at the Centre for Work and Life at the University of South Australia. Her boss there was the now Greens Senator Barbara Pocock, with whom she co-authored her first book, Time Bomb: Work, rest and play in Australia today.

• Williams has been with her partner, Shannon, for over three decades, since they were both 19. In 2003 with their two sons, they moved from Sydney to the Adelaide Hills in pursuit of "the good life," buying a 5-acre hobby farm. Shannon planted an orchard, and they kept chooks (chickens), ducks, an alpaca and a goat. Williams worked in the city while Shannon worked on the farm. Williams says, disarmingly, "We were useless at it. We had no experience; we were city kids. Suddenly everything was dying and rotting."

• So, in 2011 the family decided to take a timeout. Williams resigned from her research job, and they took the boys, then 12 and 9, out of school and headed to Italy for six months to work as WWOOFers (Willing Workers on Organic Farms). They worked in Tuscany, Calabria and Piedmont, gardening and learning how to make everything from bread and pasta to soap.

Biography (from Library of NSW)

• Hands deep in soil and supposedly living the dream, Williams had an epiphany. "I realised I didn’t have an aptitude for it. Shannon really does, but I don’t. I also realised that I had subjugated my own dreams to his, because his were so appealing. I had a dream of my own, that had been waiting for me to see it—to be a writer.

• No one ever told me not to write, but I was too busy doing "acceptable" things. But over time, creativity comes knocking. At first, it’s quiet, so it’s easy to ignore. But it gets louder, until it insists you open the door to it."

• When the family returned home, Williams got a job as a community planner at Adelaide City Council. One of her main tasks was to persuade the Council to create the Adelaide City Library. She was successful, an achievement she is proud of. But she wasn’t happy, and admits it was a tricky time. "Suddenly I had to admit that this joint dream wasn’t what I wanted. We’d invested a lot of time and emotions in it—moving states, raising the kids on the farm—and I wasn’t sure I cared that much about it. But he did, so it was a real reckoning for us, something we had to negotiate."

Biography (from Library of NSW)

• It was Shannon who urged her to write a book about their experience in Italy. He built her a special writing room at the back of the farmhouse, with wall-to-wall bookcases made from recycled timber. Calling it "a thing of beauty," she says it was everything you could want in a writing space. But somehow it was too perfect, and she found it hard to write there, buckling under the pressure of expectations that the room should inspire her. Writing One Italian Summer was a struggle. "If your expectations are unreasonable, you set yourself up to fail. One Italian Summer was so excruciating because I was constantly failing by my own standards." She got there in the end, and the book was published in 2017.

• Soon after, inspired by Simon Winchester’s novel The Surgeon of Crowthorne about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, Williams began writing The Dictionary of Lost Words, broadly the same topic, but from a female perspective. She says she always starts writing with big questions. Did it matter that the English language was being defined by men, from sources written by men? Might words have disappeared because they were used only by women?

Biography (from Library of NSW)

• This time, Williams adopted a different writing routine, one that turned out to be a game-changer. She wrote in cafes. ‘I applied my psychology brain to it—“I’m going to associate writing with the thing I love—coffee.” She also lowered her expectations. "My word goal per day was one word. If I wrote twenty words or a paragraph, it was a job well done."

• The novel’s story of the motherless Esme, whose father is a lexicographer working on the Dictionary, and how she starts collecting words used only by women for her own Dictionary of Lost Words has captivated thousands of readers all over the world.

• Later this year, many of them will be able to see it on stage: Verity Laughton’s play, based on the book, will be performed in a co-production between the Sydney Theatre Company and the State Theatre Company South Australia. Williams, thrilled, says, "I love the idea that my piece of art has inspired another piece of art. It’s taken on a life of its own."

Biography (from Library of NSW)

• Williams knew that exploring whether the Oxford English Dictionary was infected by bias was a good idea, but she wanted to make sure she did it justice: "I didn’t want to be the one who fucks that up." She was not prepared for the book’s extraordinary success and is characteristically frank about it. "Whilst I am absolutely thrilled each time the book is on a shortlist or wins a prize, my overwhelming gut feeling is embarrassment. I wasn’t brought up to be successful. We were lower middle class. I went to a school where there were no expectations of us—not a private girls’ school where girls are told they can do anything."

• She says she manages this embarrassment by "being grateful. I’m embarrassed about being embarrassed. I know I’m no more worthy than all these other people who’ve written amazing books. I’m an introvert—I’m not married, I never have birthday parties and I’m not on social media because I’ve never liked being the centre of attention." Williams describes her relationship with Dictionary as being like that of a parent with a talented child–"it’s meeting people, influencing things, making its way in the world. My role is to protect it from exploitation—just like a parent."

Biography (from Library of NSW)

• For both novels she had writing mentors who are novelists themselves—Toni Jordan for Dictionary and Tegan Bennett Daylight for Bookbinder. "You learn so much by engaging with people who’ve been at it for longer or have a different perspective."

• She also likes working with editors, and pays credit to her editor for both novels, Ruby Ashby-Orr. "I don’t have a qualification in creative writing, so I don’t really know what I’m doing. It feels good. It sounds good—having an editor cast an expert eye over my writing, to polish and sharpen it, is important."

• She started The Bookbinder of Jericho in 2020, just before Dictionary was published. This latest novel is about Peggy, a young working-class woman, who works with her twin sister Maude in the Oxford University Press bindery in Jericho, a neighbourhood of Oxford, during World War I. Peggy also volunteers at a nearby hospital for wounded soldiers. She is smart and ambitious, and dreams of attending the nearby women-only Oxford college, Somerville, but her gender and class stand in the way.

The Dictionary of Lost Words (2021)

• It is clear that Pip Williams loves language. In her debut novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, she examines cultural attitudes about words, why some are considered “acceptable” while others are not for use in “polite company” and how even the most “questionable” words have their times and uses.

• All of this is done by following Esme Nicoll, the fictitious daughter of a member of the team of men that labored for decades to complete the first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s life begins near the end of the Victorian era and continues through suffrage and the first World War, allowing Williams to explore the societal and classist mores women had to navigate while living their daily lives. (from Los Angeles Public Library)

The Bookbinder of Jericho (2023)

• The follow-up and companion to one of the most successful Australian novels ever, The Dictionary of Lost Words. What is lost when knowledge is withheld?

• In 1914, when the war draws the young men of Britain away to fight, it is the women who must keep the nation running. Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho. Peggy is intelligent, ambitious and dreams of studying at Oxford University, but for most of her life she has been told her job is to bind the books, not read them. Maude, meanwhile, wants nothing more than what she has. She is extraordinary but vulnerable. Peggy needs to watch over her.

• When refugees arrive from the devastated cities of Belgium, it sends ripples through the community and through the sisters’ lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future where she can use her intellect and not just her hands, but as war and illness reshape her world, it is love, and the responsibility that comes with it, that threaten to hold her back.

• In this beautiful companion to the international bestseller The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams explores another little-known slice of history seen through women’s eyes. Evocative, subversive and rich with unforgettable characters, The Bookbinder of Jericho is a story about knowledge – who gets to make it, who gets to access it, and what is lost when it is withheld.

One Italian Summer: Across the world and back in search of the good life (2017)

• Amazon blurb:

  • Pip and Shannon dreamed of living the good life. They wanted to slow down, grow their own food and spend more time with the people they love. But jobs and responsibilities got in the way: their chooks died, their fruit rotted, and Pip ended up depressed and in therapy. So they did the only reasonable thing - they quit their jobs, pulled the children out of school and went searching for la dolce vita in Italy. One Italian Summer is a warm, funny and poignant story of a family's search for a better way of living, in the homes and on the farms of strangers. Pip sleeps in a tool shed, feasts under a Tuscan sun, works like a tractor in Calabria and, eventually, finds the good life she's always dreamed of - though not at all where she expected.

• The book is a memoir

Publications

• Time Bomb: Work, Rest and Play in Australia Today–April 1, 2012, by Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner, Philippa Williams

• Time poverty is a problem for many Australian households and work is the main culprit.

• Australians start work young, and we are working more, and longer into old age. While maximizing our productivity and enhancing our professional skills, we must also raise our children well, care for our aged, be involved in our community and shrink our carbon footprint – a footprint shaped by the patterns and habits of our work, social obligations and households.

• What is it costing Australians to try and do it all? And what is it costing our families and communities?

• Incisive and thought-provoking, Time Bomb throws light on poor urban planning, workplace laws and practices, care obligations and other issues that rob us of time and put our households under pressure. And it looks at how work affects our response to the greatest concern of our time – our environmental challenges.

Cast of characters

• Esme Nicoll

  • The novel follows her journey from childhood to death at 46. Her love of language provides a lens for exploring themes of class, gender hierarchies, and the limitations of words in expressing human experiences and the violence endured by women.

  • Esme is intelligent but sheltered by her upbringing in an upper-class and her lack of a mother, although Lizzie plays that role throughout her life, as does Ditte to some extent.

  • She comes to understand women's second class status when lexicographers dismiss, lose, or discard words relating to women or entries submitted by women. To address class issues, she creates her own dictionary, collecting the words that women use, particularly the colloquialisms of working and lower-class women, words the lexicographers and editors refuse to include. And of course she gets involved with the suffrage movement despite her initial fears.

  • She permanently disfigures her hand while attempting to save her mother’s name from a fire, faces pregnancy after her first sexual encounter, gives her baby up for adoption, becomes a war widow, and tragically dies in a car accident.

  • But in the end, the novel celebrates her work as a lexicographer through her daughter Megan.

Cast of characters

• Harry Nicoll—Esme's father

  • He stands out as one of the novel’s kindest and most compassionate characters. He loves his daughter, nurtures her curiosity and supports her interests. Harry prioritizes Esme’s well-being over societal norms, refusing to let convention dictate their relationship.

  • However, he struggles to address the challenges that arise as Esme grows up, wondering what Lily, Esme's mother, would say or do. But he generally supports her. After he has enrolled her in Cauldshiels, a boarding school in Scotland to provide Esme with a better education, with Ditte's advice, he also withdraws her when he discovers the abuse. And he accepts her pregnancy without marriage.

  • He also represents to some degree the misogyny prevalent during the time; he would prefer Esme follows the traditional roles society dictated at the time. Although he privately educates his daughter, he doesn't always defend her within the Scriptorium, yielding to the wishes of other Dictionary men.

  • Nevertheless, Harry’s love for words and language leaves a lasting impact on Esme and  inspires her project to collect Women’s Words.

Cast of characters

• Lizzie Lester

  • Lizzie Lester is a bondmaid in Dr. Murray’s household and Esme’s friend, perhaps even a mother figure. She's limited, however, by her social class and position, as well as her lack of education.  She also represents the conservative position on women's role in that era. Despite her deep religious beliefs, she never judges Esme for her out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

  • As Lizzie exists on the periphery of Esme’s life, her character is revealed through Esme’s observations. Lizzie surprises Esme with her astute political insights, expressing suspicion toward the suffragettes’ revolution not because she opposes progress, but because she believes it will never benefit someone like her.

  • Her wisdom challenges stereotypes linking education to intelligence. Lizzie’s perspective offers a nuanced analysis, such as critiquing the violent actions of Tilda and Mrs. Pankhurst’s organization, which she believes harm their cause. Through Lizzie, Williams defies conventional assumptions about the connection between education and wisdom.

Cast of characters

• Gareth Owen, compositor with OUP, Esme's husband

  • Initially Esme underestimates the complexity of Gareth’s job, assuming it is simplistic. However, as she discovers the skill involved in typesetting, she confronts her own internalized prejudices about class and education.

  • Like Harry, Gareth shares characteristics such as kindness and unwavering support for Esme. Unlike other men in her life, including antagonists like Mr. Crane and Mr. Dankworth, or more subtle sexists like Dr. Murray, Gareth believes wholeheartedly in Esme’s intellectual capabilities.

  • During their courtship, Gareth composes an edition of Women’s Words, demonstrating his belief in Esme’s project and leaving the type trays open for additional copies to be printed.

  • His unconditional love transforms Esme’s initial resistance to marriage, proving that being loved does not equate to being owned—a radical concept during her lifetime. Gareth’s genuine affection and support offer Esme a profound understanding of love and partnership.

Cast of characters

• Tilda Taylor—actress. Suffragette, "dollymop"—she represents a more liberated perspective on women's role compared to Lizzie's more conventional and conservative.

• An activist with Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union, she stands out as an influential figure in Esme’s life.

• Unlike anyone Esme has met before, Tilda’s liberated views on sexuality and her modern perspective on women’s rights in 20th century England serve as a striking contrast to the conservative Lizzie.

• Both Tilda and Lizzie exert their influences on Esme, pulling her in different directions—Lizzie towards security and tradition, and Tilda towards freedom and exploration. Tilda’s unwavering determination to embrace life to the fullest inspires her to help Esme do the same.

• The novel draws parallels between Tilda’s resolute support for women's suffrage and the conviction of men who enlist to fight in WWI. Like them, Tilda is fully committed to using force to achieve her goals, and her fellow activists endure physical suffering, much like soldiers on the battlefield.

• Esme is occasionally taken aback by Tilda’s extremism, but their friendship remains steadfast. In later years, Esme comes to realize that despite their differing methods, they were fighting the same battle—to make women seen and heard.

Cast of characters

• Edith Robinson (Ditte in Denmark)—Esme's godmother from whom Harry seeks advice; she knew Lily, Esme's mother. She writes him frequently, also regularly contributes to the Dictionary. Well educated, she lives in Bath with her sister Beth. Also a real-life character, as is her sister, though both are fictionalized because little factual detail is available.

• Mrs. Ballard—cook

• Scriptorium

  • Dr. James Murray, with daughters Elsie, Rosfrith, Hilda

  • Mr. Sweatman

  • Mr. Maling (speaks Esperanto)

  • Mr. Worrall

  • Mr. Mitchell (wears odd socks)

  • Mr. Dankworth—uptight, judgmental. When Esme returns to the Scriptorium and finds he has moved in, next to her desk, he ignores her and she remarks: "How easily I was put in my place."

Cast of characters

• OUP editors

  • Mr. Horace Hart

  • Mr. Bradley, editor

  • Eleanor, his daughter, works at the Old Ashmolean

  • Mr. William Craigie, editor

• Mabel—old woman Esme meets in the market who gives her words women speak, and figures she carves.

• Sarah and Philip Brooks—Friends of Ditte and Beth who adopt Esme's child, whom they name Megan, and move to Australia

• Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd (Natasha)—they manage Cobbler's Dingle in Shropshire, overlooking Wales, where Esme and Lizzie visit to overcome her post-partum depression. Natasha and Lizzie become friends. Mrs. Lloyd calls Lizzie her "bostin mairt" or "lovely friend."

The Bodleian Library

• The Bodleian Library is the main research library at the University of Oxford, and one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second-largest library in Britain after the British Library.

• Under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, it is one of six legal deposit libraries for works published in the United Kingdom, and under Irish law it is entitled to request a copy of each book published in the Republic of Ireland.

• Known to Oxford scholars as "Bodley" or "the Bod," it operates principally as a reference library and, in general, documents may not be removed from the reading rooms.

The Bodleian

• Doors to the Bodleian's main entrance, with the coats of arms of several Oxford colleges.

• All colleges of the University of Oxford have their own libraries, which in a number of cases were established well before the foundation of the Bodleian, and all of which remain entirely independent of the Bodleian.

• They do, however, participate in SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online), the Bodleian Libraries' online union catalogue, except for University College, which has an independent catalogue.

• Much of the library's archives were digitized and put online for public access in 2015.

Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology

• The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology on Beaumont Street, Oxford, is Britain's first public museum, erected in 1678–1683 to house the curiosities given to Oxford by Elias Ashmole in 1677. It is also the world's second university museum, after the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1661 by the University of Basel.

• The museum opened on May 24, 1683, with naturalist Robert Plot as the first keeper. The building on Broad Street (later known as the Old Ashmolean) is sometimes attributed to Sir Christopher Wren or Thomas Wood.

• Elias Ashmole had acquired the collection from the gardeners, travellers, and collectors John Tradescant and his son. It included antique coins, books, engravings, geological specimens, and zoological specimens—one of which was the stuffed body of the last dodo seen in Europe; but by 1755 the stuffed dodo was so moth-eaten that it was destroyed, except for its head and one claw.

• The present building was built between 1841 and 1845.

Emmeline Pankhurst

• She was a British political activist who organised the UK suffragette movement and helped women win the right to vote.

• In 1999, Time named her one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back."

• She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.

• In 1903, she founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an all-women suffrage advocacy organisation dedicated to "deeds, not words." The group identified as independent from—and often in opposition to--political parties. Known for physical confrontations, its members smashed windows and assaulted police officers. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists received repeated prison sentences, where they staged hunger strikes to secure better conditions, but were often force-fed.

Interview (from LAPL)

• What was your inspiration for The Dictionary of Lost Words?

  • I’d read and enjoyed Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman, a book about the relationship between the editor of the OED, James Murray, and one of the volunteers who supplied examples of how words had been used in literature. I became fascinated by the process of compiling the Dictionary, but when I’d finished reading, there were niggling questions I could find no answers for. For example, if everyone involved in defining the words were men, then how well did that first edition of the OED represent the way women used words?

  • If all the words in the OED had to have a textual source (which they did), then what words might have been lost because they were never written down—words spoken by the illiterate, the poor, or women doing women’s work. I read a bit more and looked things up online, but I couldn’t find answers to these questions. What I did find, though, was a curious little story about a lost word.

  • The word "bondmaid" was discovered missing from the first volume of words in 1901. It should have been between "bondly" and "bondman," but it wasn’t. The word means slave girl, and no one knows how it went missing. It is a mystery ripe for solving, I thought, and that is when the seed of an idea for a story began to grow.

Interview (from LAPL)

• Many of the characters in the books are based on individuals involved in the creation of the OED. Others are your own creation. Are Esme or any other characters inspired by or based on specific individuals?

  • In many ways, Esme is inspired by the many women who contributed to that first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. They included paid assistants, volunteers who sent in examples of how words were used in text, and women who engaged with the words that were finally published.

  • The only character in the novel who is based on a real person is Ditte, Esme’s godmother. Ditte is a fictionalized version of a woman called Edith Thompson. The dilemma I had was whether or not to name Edith Thompson—she was involved in the OED as a volunteer contributor and proofreader from the letter A to the letter Z and yet so little is written about her in the official history.

Interview (from LAPL)

• Many of the characters in the books are based on individuals involved in the creation of the OED. Others are your own creation. Are Esme or any other characters inspired by or based on specific individuals?

  • What I did know about her was interesting and relevant to the story I was telling. As I wrote, she became Esme’s godmother. Of course, this was not a possibility in real life, and everything I’ve written about their relationship is a complete fiction, but I think it rings true to the Edith I came to know during my research.

  • Right up until the book went to the printers, I was debating whether to give her a pseudonym, just to be safe, just to avoid any criticism. In the end, I decided I wanted people to know about Edith Thompson and her role in the development of the Dictionary. I let her keep her real name because I did not want her overlooked, and I couldn’t bear to excise her from my story. But to acknowledge that the relationship between Esme and Edith is fiction, I let Esme give her the nickname, Ditte.

Questions for discussion

• From Author's Note:

  • This book began as two simple questions: Do words mean different things to men and women? And if they do, is it possible that we have lost something in the process of defining them? I have had a love–hate relationship with words and dictionaries my whole life. I have trouble spelling words and I frequently use them incorrectly (affluent, after all, sounds so much like effluent, it really is an easy mistake to make).

  • As a child, when I used to ask the adults in my life for help, they would say, “Look it up in the dictionary,” but when you can’t spell, the dictionary can be an impenetrable thing. Despite my clumsy handling of the English language, I have always loved how writing words down in a particular way can create a rhythm, or conjure an image, or express an emotion. It has been the greatest irony of my life that I should choose words to explore my inner and outer worlds.

Questions for discussion

• Is it just me, or do we as readers come to really know, and like, a number of characters in this novel.

• How do you feel about the various characters portrayed here?

Questions for discussion

• Of the various themes explored throughout this novel, the most dominant is the importance of words. Whose words matter? Why do words matter?

• From a statement in the epilogue (p. 358):

  • “Words define us, they explain us, and, on occasion, they serve to control or isolate us. But what happens when words that are spoken are not recorded? What effects does that have on the speaker of those words?”

• So, why are words important?

Questions for discussion

• When Edith, Ditte, tells Esme the story of her mother and father

  • “And then I was born and then she died.”

  • “Yes.”

  • “But when we talk about her, she comes to life.”

  • “Never forget that Esme. Words are our tools of resurrection.”

  • A new word. I looked up. “It’s when you bring something back,” Ditte said.

• Do you think this is true about words?

Questions for discussion

• As Esme is preparing to give birth, Sarah advises her to yell, screaming out impolite words:

  • “Some words are more than letters on a page, don’t you think?” she said . . . “They have shape and texture. They are like bullets, full of energy, and when you give one breath you can feel its sharp edge against your lip. It can be quite cathartic in the right context.”

Questions for discussion

• Initially, Esme puts the "lost words" she finds in the trunk hidden under Lizzie's bed. She also keeps "lost words" and their slips in a shoe box in her desk at the Scriptorium. Why does she hide them? Late in the novel, as she collects more words from women on the street, she asks:

• These slips were precious to me, and I hid them in the trunk to keep them safe. But from what? Did I fear they would be scrutinised and found deficient? Or were those fears I had for myself?

• My Dictionary of Lost Words was no better than the grille in the Ladies’ Gallery of the House of Commons: it hid what should be seen and silenced what should be heard. When Mabel was gone and I was gone, the trunk would be no more than a coffin.

Questions for discussion

Why was Lizzy the custodian of the trunk of words? Why didn’t Esme claim it when it was she who filled it?

Questions for discussion

• From Pip Williams:

  • I was left with the impression that the Dictionary was a particularly male endeavour. From what I could glean, all the editors were men, most of the assistants were men, most of the volunteers were men and most of the literature, manuals and newspaper articles used as evidence for how words were used, were written by men. Finally, the Delegates of the Oxford University Press—those who held the purse strings—were men.

  • Where, I wondered, are the women in this story, and does it matter that they are absent?

  • This novel is my attempt to understand how the way we define language might define us.

• Questions for discussion

• What happened while Esme and Lizzie stayed at Cobblers Dingle?

• When they returned to Sunnyside, Lizzie to go back to the Murray house and Esme to the Scriptorium, Esme says:

  • It had a heaviness about it, this farewell, as if we were leaving to travel in different directions, when in fact we were back on shared and familiar ground. But something had shifted. Lizzie was different, or perhaps it was just that now I saw her differently, as a woman who existed beyond my need for her. When we’d left Oxford I’d been her charge, as always. Now we embraced as friends,

• Later she says:

  • Every time I came home, the Scriptorium seemed smaller. I’d been grateful for it when I returned from Ditte’s: it had wrapped around me, and as long as I’d stayed within its word-lined walls I’d felt protected. This time was different. I stood in the doorway, my travelling bag still heavy in my hand, and wondered how I would fit.

Questions for discussion

• Pip Williams includes both the war and the suffrage movement in this historical novel, events that occurred during the time that the Dictionary was being prepared.

• The first wave of feminism and the suffragette movement was roiling through England during the same time that the OED was being developed.

• Why do you think the author choose to include the movement as a key sub-plot?

Questions for discussion

• At the end of the novel, while Gareth is away at war, Esme visits patients in the hospital who had worked at the print shop, including Bertie, who's suffering from PTSD, or "shell shock" in those days, and can't speak. He also hates the word "bomb," which triggers an attack when he hears it.

• How does this fit in with the primary theme of the novel, the power of words?

Questions for discussion

• Gareth, who came from a humble background and doesn’t consider himself a poet, writes beautiful letters home to Esme.

• Consider Esme and Gareth’s relationship. How was their friendship and ultimate love important to the narrative?

Questions for discussion

• I don't know if I should ask this question, but the novel ends really after Gareth's death. Esme leaves Sunnyside and the Scriptorium and the Dictionary to take a job working with war veterans at the hospital. After that we have the Epilogue, which fills us in on Megan, years later.

• Why does the story end here?

Breakout room question

• What dd you take away from this novel? Is this a novel that you will remember? Why?

• Or, despite the fact that this book is categorized as an historical novel, I'm tempted to call it a "love story." Is that accurate?

• Does this theme—the power of words—remind you of any other novels we've read?

Questions for discussion

• In the epilogue Pip Williams introduces Megan Brooks, Esme's daughter, as a noted Australian lexicographer, receiving an award for her work on the native language of the Kaurna people. Megan begins her speech by drawing on the slip with the word "bondmaid," the first Esme ever recorded. The text says:

  • “The great James Murray once said, ‘I am not a literary man. I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.’

  • “Words define us, they explain us, and, on occasion, they serve to control or isolate us. But what happens when words that are spoken are not recorded? What effect does that have on the speaker of those words?

• One lexicographer, whom we can all be grateful has read between the lines of the great dictionaries of the English language, including Dr. Murray’s OED, is Professor Megan Brooks: professor emeritus of the University of Adelaide, chair of the Australasian Philological Society and recipient of an OAM for services to language.

Interview (from LAPL)

• What is the question that you’re always hoping you’ll be asked, but never have been?

  • I’m always hoping to be asked about my daily writing practice because I think it is brilliant. After trying all sorts of approaches to writing and failing miserably and therefore being miserable (a daily word goal of 1000 words; sitting at the desk for two hours morning and afternoon; writing a page of gibberish before writing ‘the novel’), I decided that my only obligation was to type one word per day. Just one.

  • The beauty of this goal is two-fold. First, the requirement is so insignificant that it is not worthy of the procrastination monkey. Secondly, it is hard to fall short. All I have to do is open my laptop and type one word. It will take a minute, maybe two, and then I am permitted to close my laptop and watch Netflix.

  • But it’s like telling someone who is avoiding exercise that all they are required to do is put on their runners and take one step out the door. Once your runners are on and the door is open, walking is easy.

  • Similarly, once the laptop is open and you’ve typed that first word, the next two or three just tumble out and before you know it you’ve written 100 words, maybe 200 words, sometimes 300 words—at that point you are as good as Virginia Woolf and any more words would be an overachievement.

Interview (from LAPL)

• How did the novel evolve and change as you wrote and revised it? Were any characters or scenes lost in the process that you wish had made it to the published version?

  • I had a big picture idea of where the novel would go and what some of the key moments would be, but as I wrote each scene anything could happen. This was due to two things, the characters and the research.

  • Sometimes as I wrote, a character would say or do something that I hadn’t planned or anticipated, but which seemed perfectly natural. Other times, I would do a bit of research to understand the context my characters were in and discover something that I couldn’t ignore.

  • The suffrage storyline ended up being far stronger than it might have been. I hadn’t realized when I started writing, how close the timelines of the OED and the women’s suffrage movement in the UK were. They are stories that history has kept separate, but for me, they wrapped around each other in a way that I think still resonates today. When I realized that women in the UK were finally given equal political rights to men within weeks of the OED being completed (in 1928) it felt like a gift, but also a validation of the story I was telling.

Interview (from LAPL)

• How did the novel evolve and change as you wrote and revised it? Were any characters or scenes lost in the process that you wish had made it to the published version?

  • As for scenes that didn’t make the cut, there weren’t many. As with the Dictionary, there are words that have been sacrificed in the interests of space, and others that I am saving for another story.

• Interview (from LAPL)

• How familiar were you with the creation of the OED prior to writing The Dictionary of Lost Words? How long did it take you to do the research and then write the novel?

  • I knew nothing about the creation of the OED before reading The Professor and the Madman. That book made me curious about whether words might mean different things to men and women; it made me wonder if it mattered that the English language was being defined by me, from books written mostly by men. It sent me to the library to find out more (the internet can only take you so far—the library is where all the beautiful detail lies). That detail gave me what I needed to create the world of the Scriptorium and to imagine what it might be like for a little girl to grow up amongst all those words at a time of such social and political change.

  • So I read enough to understand the context in a general way and then I started writing. The writing informed my research and then the research informed my writing. I would shift between the two activities constantly. In the end, the book took two years to complete and I loved every minute of it.

• Interview (from LAPL)

• What was the most interesting or surprising thing that you learned about the OED, and the people that worked on it, during your research?

  • That the idea for the Dictionary started with a group of Philologists who were part of the intriguingly named Unregistered Words Committee. That these highly educated and privileged men didn’t have the skills to make the Dictionary a success and so turned to a Scottish school teacher to take over as editor. That this school teacher, James Murray, set up his Scriptorium in a garden shed in his back garden and relied heavily on his 11 children to help sort slips of words. That there were a number of women on the payroll of the Dictionary, but none had any decision making capacity. That during WWI proof pages were sent to a lexicographer in the trenches to be edited and sent back to Oxford.

Interview (from LAPL)

• Did you have a “favorite” word prior to beginning your work? After you finished?

  • Kindness was my favorite word before I started writing The Dictionary of Lost Words, and kindness is still my favorite word. I hope it never becomes obsolete through lack of relevance.

  • I’ve also always been fond of discombobulated, and since finishing the book I have a greater appreciation for knackered (worn out), and froudacious (lying), as well as a few words that were obsolete even at the time they were defined, like anywhen (any time), breel (a worthless, good for nothing fellow) and slummock (to kiss amorously, in a particularly wet and slobbery way).

  • My favorite new word from 2020 is anthropause (a global slowdown of travel and other human activities)—I’m hoping we retain some of the lessons we may have learned during this slowdown.

Next week

• Background for The Woman in the Library,

• including the Boston Public Library

• Is there a theme going here?