Tuesday, July 9 at 7pm
Hybrid, meeting in-person at Schimelpfenig Library and on Zoom
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
Available as Print | eBook | eAudiobook
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words.
Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, the book reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story.