I was welcomed into the archives at the Oxford University Press and given access to original slips containing words and quotations, to the proof pages of dictionary volumes, to photographs, and letters between people I was writing about. Each day I would walk the streets of Oxford, imagining where Esme might go and what she would see. They are among the oldest colleges in England and they put me in the right frame of mind for the research. On both occasions I stayed in a student room at one of the Oxford University colleges, first Magdalen and then Brasenose. So, I did once at the very start of the writing, and then at the end, when I had a draft and knew what information I needed to make the story authentic and ‘true’. I had to go to Oxford if I wanted to tell it well. I could not find it on line or order it through Book Depository. There are plenty of excellent books to consult about the history of the OED, and no shortage of information about its most beloved editor, James Murray, but the story I wanted to tell was not part of the historical record. The problem with having an idea for a story that is based on real events and real people and is set on the other side of the world, is the research. What was the research process like for the book?

It is a mystery ripe for solving, I thought, and that is when the seed of an idea for a story began to grow. The word means slave girl, and no one knows how it went missing. It should have been between bondly and bondman, but it wasn’t. The word bondmaid was discovered missing from the first volume of words in 1901. What I did find, though, was a curious little story about a lost word. I read a bit more and looked things up on line, but I couldn’t find answers to these questions.

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 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. I had read and enjoyed Simon Winchester’s The Surgeon of Crowthorne, a book about the relationship between the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, James Murray, and one of the volunteers who supplied examples of how words had been used in literature.

The story follows her from childhood into adulthood and the reader is right beside her as she navigates the meaning of words, the women’s suffrage movement, love, loss and WWI. The Dictionary of Lost Words weaves the life of a fictional character, Esme, through the history of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The surgeon of crowthorne true story