The Professor and the Madman : : a Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / General / Winchester, Simon, Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / General / Winchester, Simon
On Shelf At: Malletts Creek Branch, Traverwood Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / General / Winchester, Simon	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / General / Winchester, Simon	4-week checkout	On Shelf

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

fascinating & entertaining history for nerds submitted by FordAlpha on July 30, 2018, 1:08pm Although Simon Winchester's writing style occasionally grates, this is one of the most engrossing, page-turning non-fiction books you're likely to encounter. Who knew that an institution as staid as the Oxford English Dictionary had such sordid episodes in its history?

Thanks Tim Gunn! submitted by emroon on August 5, 2022, 12:33pm I saw this bill on a list of Tim Gunn’s recommended books and I picked it up. It was a really fascinating history of dictionaries, words, and the treatment of mental health. Would recommend!

Learned some things, but it leaves out women submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 18, 2023, 11:12am I liked this for the story of the history of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), thought the writing was somewhat dry, and it utterly and completely ticked me off for various ways that it treated (or failed to acknowledge) women.

The first two are pretty self-explanatory. As a history of the OED, this was new and interesting, and Winchester depicts the two main biographic characters (James Murray and W.C. Minor) compellingly. I didn’t know anything about their lives or the creation of dictionaries, and now I do. I like that. But Winchester’s writing style is stuffy and long-winded, frequently reaching to use multisyllabic OED words like he’s trying to prove he owns it and has read it.

And the misogynistic bull! I have a hard time believing that a story encompassing 80 years could possibly have so little intersection with girls or women of any sort. For example, on page 48-49 we are introduced to Dr. Minor’s description of the cause of his own insanity, which is his 13 yo self’s lust for the appallingly described Ceylonese girls he saw playing on the beach as a boy. The entire description reads very much like “she wore a skirt so she was asking to be raped.” (We can add racism to the problem, because the chance that the given description would have been acceptable if the girls were American or British seems very slim. As a matter of fact, the description of the British teen girl he encounters shortly thereafter is NOTHING like the Ceylonese girls.)

I found only a handful of girls/women in this book. There was a landlady, the aforementioned nubile, naked Indigenous girls of Ceylon, and a British girl (also lusted after), the Queen of England was mentioned, as well as 3 irrelevant but named female contributors to the OED. The most commented on woman was the wife of the man who was murdered, a mother of 7, who is given no more meaningful address than that she visited Minor at the asylum, eventually forgave him, and brought him books. This is how women are written out of history. I do recognize that this was primarily the biography of two men, but this complete evaporation of women was the author’s choice. THIS is why the Western world thinks that only white men have done anything important in history. THIS is why I mostly avoid white male authors. (PS. Check out the fictionalized <u>The Dictionary of Lost Words</u> either as a companion story or instead of this book for a history of the OED that discusses women's history as it relates to the dictionary's creation!)