| Description |
xxv, 260 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 23 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-253) and index. |
| Contents |
Taking the measure of it all -- Construction of the Pigeon-Holes -- General officer commanding -- Battling with the undertow -- Pushing through the untrodden forest -- So heavily goes the Chariot -- Hermit and the murderer, and Hereward Thimbleby Price -- From take to turn-down, and then, triumphal valediction -- Epilogue: And always beginning again. |
| Summary |
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. |
| Subject |
Oxford English dictionary.
|
|
Oxford English dictionary. |
|
Lexicology -- History.
|
|
Lexicology. |
|
History. |
| ISBN |
0198607024 |
|
