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ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ---- Esme is the daughter of one of the men working to compile the first Oxford English Dictionary. Growing up in the 'Scriptorium', the garden shed where her father works with a team of lexicographers, Esme is constantly surrounded by words. One day, she steals a slip of paper with a word written on it. It's the start of an obsession- even before she can read them, she begins to collect other misplaced, forgotten or lost words. As she grows older, her interest expands beyond the Scriptorium- she collects words from the maid who helped raise her, the lower class merchants at the Covered Market, and Suffragettes campaigning for women's right to vote. Esme begins to question what makes a word worthy of being included in the Dictionary, and why so many words pertaining to, and used by, women are excluded. This was a beautiful & moving historical fiction with a wonderful, colourful cast of characters, and I regret that I didn't read this sooner as I couldn't put it down! - Hannah
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the 'Scriptorium', a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word 'bondmaid' flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.
Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women's experiences often go unrecorded. While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, secretly, she begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.
Set when the women's suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. It's a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape the world and our experience of it.
Pip was born in London, grew up in Sydney and now calls the Adelaide Hills home. She is co-author of the book Time Bomb: Work Rest and Play in Australia Today (New South Press, 2012) and in 2017 she wrote One Italian Summer, a memoir of her family's travels in search of the good life, which was published with Affirm Press to wide acclaim. In The Dictionary of Lost Words she combines her talent for historical research with beautiful storytelling. She has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary and found a tale of missing words and the lives of women lived between the lines.
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ---- Esme is the daughter of one of the men working to compile the first Oxford English Dictionary. Growing up in the 'Scriptorium', the garden shed where her father works with a team of lexicographers, Esme is constantly surrounded by words. One day, she steals a slip of paper with a word written on it. It's the start of an obsession- even before she can read them, she begins to collect other misplaced, forgotten or lost words. As she grows older, her interest expands beyond the Scriptorium- she collects words from the maid who helped raise her, the lower class merchants at the Covered Market, and Suffragettes campaigning for women's right to vote. Esme begins to question what makes a word worthy of being included in the Dictionary, and why so many words pertaining to, and used by, women are excluded. This was a beautiful & moving historical fiction with a wonderful, colourful cast of characters, and I regret that I didn't read this sooner as I couldn't put it down! - Hannah
