When the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary put out a call during the late 19th century pleading for "men of letters" to provide help with their mammoth undertaking, hundreds of responses came forth. Some helpers, like Dr. W.C. Minor, provided literally thousands of entries to the editors. But Minor, an American expatriate in England and a Civil War veteran, was actually a certified lunatic who turned in his dictionary entries from the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Simon Winchester has produced a mesmerizing coda to the deeply troubled Minor's life, a life that in one sense began with the senseless murder of an innocent British brewery worker that the deluded Minor believed was an assassin sent by one of his numerous "enemies."

Winchester also paints a rich portrait of the OED's leading light, Professor James Murray, who spent more than 40 years of his life on a project he would not see completed in his lifetime. Winchester traces the origins of the drive to create a "Big Dictionary" down through Murray and far back into the past; the result is a fascinating compact history of the English language (albeit admittedly more interesting to linguistics enthusiasts than historians or true crime buffs). That Murray and Minor, whose lives took such wildly disparate turns yet were united in their fierce love of language, were able to view one another as peers and foster a warm friendship is just one of the delicately turned subplots of this compelling book. --Tjames Madison

Amazon.com Audiobook Review
The compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary, 70 years in the making, was an intellectually heroic feat with a twist worthy of the greatest mystery fiction: one of its most valuable contributors was a criminally insane American physician, locked up in an English asylum for murder. British stage actor Simon Jones leads us through this uncommon meeting of minds (the other belonging to self-educated dictionary editor James Murray) at full gallop. Ultimately, it's hard to say which is more remarkable: the facts of this amazingly well-researched story, or the sound of author Simon Winchester's erudite prose. Jones's reading smoothly transports listeners to the 19th century, reminding us why so many brilliant people obsessively set out to catalogue the English language. This unabridged version contains an interview between Winchester and John Simpson, editor of the Oxford dictionary. (Running time: 6.5 hours, 6 cassettes) --Lou Schuler

From Publishers Weekly
The Oxford English Dictionary used 1,827,306 quotations to help define its 414,825 words. Tens of thousands of those used in the first edition came from the erudite, moneyed American Civil War veteran Dr. W.C. Minor?all from a cell at the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Vanity Fair contributor Winchester (River at the Center of the World) has told his story in an imaginative if somewhat superficial work of historical journalism. Sketching Minor's childhood as a missionary's son and his travails as a young field surgeon, Winchester speculates on what may have triggered the prodigious paranoia that led Minor to seek respite in England in 1871 and, once there, to kill an innocent man. Pronounced insane and confined at Broadmoor with his collection of rare books, Minor happened upon a call for OED volunteers in the early 1880s. Here on more solid ground, Winchester enthusiastically chronicles Minor's subsequent correspondence with editor Dr. J.A.H. Murray, who, as Winchester shows, understood that Minor's endless scavenging for the first or best uses of words became his saving raison d'etre, and looked out for the increasingly frail man's well-being. Winchester fills out the story with a well-researched mini-history of the OED, a wonderful demonstration of the lexicography of the word "art" and a sympathetic account of Victorian attitudes toward insanity. With his cheeky way with a tale ("It is a brave and foolhardy and desperate man who will perform an autopeotomy" he writes of Minor's self-mutilation), Winchester celebrates a gloomy life brightened by devotion to a quietly noble, nearly anonymous task. Photos not seen by PW. Agent, Peter Matson. BOMC selection. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-This unusual and exciting account centers on two men involved in the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary-Professor James Murray, its editor, and Dr. William Chester Minor, a true Connecticut Yankee who was one of the resource's most prolific contributors. The most surprising aspect of this long and productive partnership was that Dr. Minor, probably a schizophrenic, was incarcerated in England's most notorious insane asylum during the whole of their working relationship. He was a scholar and medical doctor whose fragile mental condition was probably exacerbated by duty as a surgeon during the American Civil War. His imprisonment was not harsh and his devotion to the cause of the dictionary and his precise and prolific contributions probably helped him hold on to some sense of reality. Winchester's descriptions of Civil War battlefields and the search for definitions of words such as aardvark or elephant are intriguing and compelling. This is a fine tale for both word lovers and history buffs. The momentum of the beginning scenes of warfare and murder are followed, not disappointingly, by descriptions of the trials and tribulations of dictionary crafting. Readers will meet some extraordinary men and an unusual woman, and find themselves well and truly ensconced in the late 19th century.Susan H. Woodcock, Kings Park Library, Burke, VACopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Winchester serves up suspense and pulpy prose in just the right measure in this literate story of the Oxford English Dictionary's first editor and the expatriate American murderer who contributed more than 10,000 quotations as examples. Best of all, among the entertaining tangents one learns a great deal about the making of that grandest of all reference works. (LJ 8/98) nCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

David Walton, New York Times Book Review
"elegant and scrupulous"

The Economist
"An extraordinary tale, and Simon Winchester could not have told it better. . . . [He] has written a splendid book."

Daniel Mark Epstein, Wall Street Journal
"Mr. Winchester deftly weaves...a narrative full of suspense, pathos and humor.... In this elegant book the writer has created a vivid parable, in the spirit of Nabokov and Borges. There is much truth to be drawn from it, about Victorian pride, the relation between language and the world, and the fine line between sanity and madness."


"Winchester's history of the OED is brisk and entertaining"

The Boston Globe, Robert Taylor
...[a] fascinating tale ... [and] a compelling slice of social and intellectual history...

From AudioFile
The cover displays a sepia daguerreotype of an older man with a white flowing beard and a pillbox skullcap, leaning back thoughtfully in a garden chair. This is Dr. William Chester Minor, the schizophrenic physician-murderer who helped write the Oxford English Dictionary while an inmate at the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Simon Jones narrates this bizarre but true story with a rich mahogany baritone and an appropriately snooty English accent. His wide dramatic range is well adapted to this tale, which spans the extremes of reason and sanity. Though abridged, the transitions are seamless and lushly orchestrated with strains of imperial Brittania. Here's a Victorian mystery in which the truth is stranger than fiction. J.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Distinguished journalist Winchester tells a marvelous, true story that few readers will have heard about. His narrative is based on official government files locked away for more than a century. As everyone knows, the Oxford English Dictionary is an essential library reference tool. The 12-volume OED took more than 70 years to produce, and one of its most distinguishing features is the copious quotations from published works to illustrate every shade of word usage. By the late 1890s the huge project was nearly half done, and the editor at the time, Professor James Murray, felt the need to meet and personally thank Dr. William Minor, with whom he had been in lengthy contact and who had contributed a lion's share of the quotations. As it turned out, Dr. Minor was an American surgeon who many years before had been found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity but had been incarcerated in an English asylum ever since. The tale of their affiliation and friendship reads like a creatively conceived novel. Brad Hooper

From Kirkus Reviews
Remarkably readable, this chronicle of lexicography roams from the great dictionary itself to hidden nooks in the human psyche that sometimes house the motives for murder, the sources for sanity, and the blueprint for creativity. Manchester Guardian journalist Winchester (The River at the Center of the World, 1996; Pacific Rising, 1991) turns from Asia toward that most British of topics: the Oxford English Dictionary. His account is studded with odd persons and unexpected drama. To wit: When O.E.D. editor Professor James Murray headed off to meet a major contributor (of more than 10,000 entries) to his epochal reference work, he discovered that this distinguished philologist, Dr. William Chester Minor, was incarcerated for life in an asylum for the criminally insane. Minor, apparently a paranoiac killer, had committed murder in 1872; to his lasting travail, hed witnessed atrocities in the American Civil War. Latterly ailing (and sexually repressed), he clung to his lexicographic efforts for dear life and the sake of his sanityor what remained of it. All those Dictionary slips, opines Winchester, were [Minors] medication, [and] became his therapy. When he describes the original O.E.D.s ``twelve tombstone-sized volumes,'' we get a whiff of the grueling mental task exacted from its servants by the work, reminiscent of the labors involved in Melville's classic ``Bartleby the Scrivener''in a book that is similarly a psychological masterwork. In praising the achievement of the work, Winchester rejoices, ``It wears its status with a magisterial self-assurance, not least by giving its half million definitions a robustly Victorian certitude of tone.'' Winchesters own tone and his prose are wonderfully Victorian, an apt mirror for his subject. The author begins each chapter with an entry from the original O.E.D. as an appropriate heading, such as ``murder,'' ``lunatic,'' ``polymath'' (``a person of much or varied learning'') and, eventually, ``acknowledgment.'' First-rate writing: well-crafted, incisive, abundantly playful. (b&w photos, not seen) (Book- of-the-Month Club selection) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


"a fascinating, spicy, learned tale"

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
September 1998

Perhaps the greatest character of this story is the dictionary itself: a complete history and definition of every word that ever existed in the English language. Originally envisioned as a ten-year project that would produce 6,400 pages spread through four volumes, the finished product took 70 years to complete and comprised some 15,490 pages over ten volumes. There are 414,800 words in the OED, defined and illustrated by 1,861,200 quotations from some 4,500 works of literature by 2,700 writers, all of it compiled by 2,000 contributors around the globe. The entire enterprise was overseen by a single editor.

The EditorThough entrusted with the greatest literary project in the history of written English, James Murray (1837-1915) came from outside the establishment of London intellectual society and grew up in a world far removed from the rarified halls of Oxford University. A self-taught master of more than a dozen ancient and modern languages (his formal education ended at age 14), he developed a comprehensive knowledge of and driving passion for words. Murray's scholarly work brought him into the staid and prestigious London Philological Society. It was there that the dictionary project was launched and there, in 1879, that Murray was given control of it.

As the editor in chief, it was his job to ensure the absolutely accurate cataloguing of every word English writers have ever written. He oversaw a workshop of clerks and subeditors who received, sorted, and resorted the thousands of submissions pouring in weekly from hundreds of active contributors around the world. The readers' job was to find the earliest possible illustrative uses of every word, write them on slips of paper, and ship them off to Oxford. Some contributors were more trouble than use. Others distinguished themselves as invaluable researchers.

The ReaderOne of the most prolific readers was Dr. W. C. Minor, a retired U.S. Army captain, a Yale graduate, and an inmate of England's Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Cogent, but deeply and dangerously delusional, Minor contributed some 10,000 quotations to the dictionary over two decades.

The BookThe Professor and the Madman interweaves the sagas of Murray, Minor, and the OED with all the fascination of a well-crafted mystery, compelling the reader to find out how two such remarkable men came to cooperate on such a ludicrously ambitious project. Simon Winchester's history celebrates the dictionary, the man who made it happen, and one of the project's most remarkable volunteers. Three great stories for the price of one.

--Greg Sewell

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary began in 1857, took seventy years to complete, drew from tens of thousands of brilliant minds, and organized the sprawling language into 414,825 precise definitions. But hidden within the rituals of its creation is a fascinating and mysterious story - a story of two remarkable men whose strange twenty-year relationship lies at the core of this historic undertaking. Professor James Murray, an astonishingly learned former schoolmaster and bank clerk, was the distinguished editor of the OED project. Dr. William Chester Minor, an American surgeon from New Haven, Connecticut, who had served in the Civil War, was one of thousands of contributors who submitted illustrative quotations of words to be used in the dictionary. But Minor was no ordinary contributor. He was remarkably prolific, sending thousands of neat, handwritten quotations from his home in the small village of Crowthorne, fifty miles from Oxford. On numerous occasions Murray invited Minor to visit Oxford and celebrate his work, but Murray's offer was regularly - and mysteriously - refused. Thus the two men, for two decades, maintained a close relationship only through correspondence. Finally, in 1896, after Minor had sent nearly ten thousand definitions to the dictionary but had still never traveled from his home, a puzzled Murray set out to visit him. It was then that Murray finally learned the truth about Minor - that, in addition to being a masterful wordsmith, Minor was also a murderer, clinically insane - and locked up in Broadmoor, England's harshest asylum for criminal lunatics.

SYNOPSIS

Part homage to the greatest reference work of all time, the Oxford English Dictionary, part mystery, part intellectual history of Victorian England, The Professor and the Madman tells the parallel stories of the dictionary's genius editor and one of his most prolific contributors, an insane American doctor committed to an asylum for murder.

FROM THE CRITICS

Globe and Mail

...It is one of the strengths of this book that it will, by its very sensationalism, attract and inform readers who might never normally lay down cold hard cash for the 'fascinating story of the history of English lexicography'....For those who know little of lexicography, this book is an entertaining, though not wholly reliable, introduction to the subject, particularly enlightening for those who labour under the delusion that the OED 's role is to prescribe what is 'proper' and 'improper' English.

Economist

An extraordinary tale, and Simon Winchester could not have told it better. . . . [He] has written a splendid book.

Wall Street Journal

Deftly weaves into a narrative full of suspense, pathos and humor.

USA Today

Droll and eloquent.

San Francisco Chronicle

Engaging, especially for readers who love words. Read all 36 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

"The Professor and the Madman...is the linguistic detective story of the decade.... Winchester does a superb job of historical research that should entice readers even more interested in deeds than words."  — Harper Collins - New Media

"elegant and scrupulous"  — Harper Collins - New Media

I found The Professor and the Madman both enthralling and moving, in its brilliant reconstruction of a most improbable event: the major contributions made to the great Oxford English Dictionary by a deeply delusional, incarcerated "madman," and the development of a true friendship between him and the editor of the OED. One sees here the redemptive potential of work and love in even the most deeply, "hopelessly," psychotic." — Harper Collins - New Media