The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

For our January 2024 read Sarah chose the Dictionary of lost words written 

by Pip Williams, an Australian author..

It is a historical fiction novel about the compilation of the Oxford dictionary, the suffrage 

movement  for women’s voting rights, and World War I.

Some of the characters are real and others are fictitious.

As it turns out the project was male dominated and also excluded words used by the lower class. Many

words  associated with women and common people were left out.

In the absence of computers it was a very tedious process .

The place where the compilation took place was called a scriptorium.

Esme is a child who picks up word slips dropped on the floor, usually ones

that are left out of the dictionary as they are deemed inappropriate. She saves these in a chest

and eventually they are published in the dictionary of lost words.

We all agreed this was a unique find on Sarah’s part and it shed a lot of light on

what is entailed in the opus of compiling a dictionary. 

We finished the evening with two kinds of soups, hearty bread and plenty

of wine both red and white.

Betsy chose “The Reading List” by Sara Nisha Adams