From Publishers Weekly
With his usual winning blend of scholarship and accessible, skillfully paced narrative, Winchester (Krakatoa) returns to the subject of his first bestseller, The Professor and the Madman, to tell the eventful, personality-filled history of the definitive English dictionary. He emphasizes that the OED project began in 1857 as an attempt to correct the deficiencies of existing dictionaries, such as Dr. Samuel Johnson's. Winchester opens with an entertaining and informative examination of the development of the English language and pre-OED efforts. The originators of the OED thought the project would take perhaps a decade; it actually took 71 years, and Winchester explores why. An early editor, Frederick Furnivall, was completely disorganized (one sack of paperwork he shipped to his successor, James Murray, contained a family of mice). Murray in turn faced obstacles from Oxford University Press, which initially wanted to cut costs at the expense of quality. Winchester stresses the immensity and difficulties of the project, which required hundreds of volunteer readers and assistants (including J.R.R. Tolkien) to create and organize millions of documents: the word bondmaid was left out of the first edition because its paperwork was lost. Winchester successfully brings readers inside the day-to-day operations of the massive project and shows us the unrelenting passion of people such as Murray and his overworked, underpaid staff who, in the end, succeeded magnificently. Winchester's book will be required reading for word mavens and anyone interested in the history of our marvelous, ever-changing language.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
The amazing history of the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY is recounted by its author, and it's a rousing listen. Rife with wit, anecdotes galore, and entertaining wordplay, this audiobook is a must for lovers of the English language. A worthy follow-up to Winchester's THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN, this telling of the creation of the OED reminds one of a decades-long climb up a lexicographer's Everest, with much struggle, infighting, and politics determining the success of the endeavor. Winchester reads crisply, suavely, and convincingly, revealing himself to be an author completely at ease with both the microphone and his material, a rarity in audiobooks. The OED is a monumental achievement, and its history as told by Winchester is a milestone in the epic journey of our language. D.J.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
The story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary has been burnished into legend over the years, at least among librarians and linguists. In The Professor and the Madman (1998), Winchester examined the strange case of one of the most prolific contributors to the first edition of the OED--one W. C. Minor, an American who sent most of his quotation slips from an insane asylum. Now, Winchester takes on the dictionary's whole history, from the first attempts to document the English language in the seventeenth century, the founding of the Philological Society in Oxford in 1842, and the start of work on the dictionary in 1860; to the completion of the first edition nearly 70 years, 414,825 words, and 1,827,306 illustrative quotations later. Although there is plenty of detail here about the methodology (including the famous pigeon holes stuffed with quotations slips from contributors around the world), the emphasis is on personalities, in particular James Murray, who became the OED's third editor in 1879 and died in 1915, "well into the letter T." The project backers complained loudly about the slow pace over the years, but the scrupulous care taken by Murray and the many others who worked on the OED gave us what is arguably the world's greatest dictionary. Publication of this book coincides with the OED's seveny-fifth anniversary, even as work on the third edition is under way. Mary Ellen Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

-William F. Buckley, The New York Times Book Review
"Teeming with knowledge and alive with insights. Winchester handles humor and awe with modesty and cunning."

-Gregory Kirshchling, Entertainment Weekly
"Peculiarly inspiring...And Winchester's involving and gregarious narration is nearly Dickensian. Even his footnotes twinkle."

-Woody West, The Washington Times
"This book, to get right to it, is a delight...a superb account."

-David Kirby, Chicago Tribune
"Entrancing...'The Meaning of Everything' is such an engaging read."

Book Description
From the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary. Writing with marvelous brio, Winchester 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. Winchester lovingly describes the nuts-and-bolts of dictionary making--how unexpectedly tricky the dictionary entry for marzipan was, or how fraternity turned out so much longer and monkey so much more ancient that anticipated--and how bondmaid was left out completely, its slips found lurking under a pile of books long after the B-volume had gone to press. We visit the ugly corrugated iron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium--the Scrippy or the Shed, as locals called it--and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W. C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, and ultimate redemption. The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project--a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, the world's unrivalled uber-dictionary.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary. Writing with marvelous brio, Winchester 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 storytelling 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. Winchester lovingly describes the nuts-and-bolts of dictionary making -- how unexpectedly tricky the dictionary entry for marzipan was, or how fraternity turned out so much longer and monkey so much more ancient that anticipated -- and how bondmaid was left out completely, its slips found lurking under a pile of books long after the B-volume had gone to press.

We visit the ugly corrugated iron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium -- the Scrippy or the Shed, as locals called it -- and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W. C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, and ultimate redemption. The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project -- a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, the world's unrivaled uber-dictionary.

FROM THE CRITICS

William F. Buckley

Simon Winchester's The Meaning of Everything tells the story of the Oxford English Dictionary. It is teeming with knowledge and alive with insights. Winchester handles humor and awe with modesty and cunning. His devotion to the story is the more eloquent for the cool-handedness of its telling. His prose is supremely readable, admirable in its lucid handling of lexicographical mire.

Publishers Weekly

With his usual winning blend of scholarship and accessible, skillfully paced narrative, Winchester (Krakatoa) returns to the subject of his first bestseller, The Professor and the Madman, to tell the eventful, personality-filled history of the definitive English dictionary. He emphasizes that the OED project began in 1857 as an attempt to correct the deficiencies of existing dictionaries, such as Dr. Samuel Johnson's. Winchester opens with an entertaining and informative examination of the development of the English language and pre-OED efforts. The originators of the OED thought the project would take perhaps a decade; it actually took 71 years, and Winchester explores why. An early editor, Frederick Furnivall, was completely disorganized (one sack of paperwork he shipped to his successor, James Murray, contained a family of mice). Murray in turn faced obstacles from Oxford University Press, which initially wanted to cut costs at the expense of quality. Winchester stresses the immensity and difficulties of the project, which required hundreds of volunteer readers and assistants (including J.R.R. Tolkien) to create and organize millions of documents: the word bondmaid was left out of the first edition because its paperwork was lost. Winchester successfully brings readers inside the day-to-day operations of the massive project and shows us the unrelenting passion of people such as Murray and his overworked, underpaid staff who, in the end, succeeded magnificently. Winchester's book will be required reading for word mavens and anyone interested in the history of our marvelous, ever-changing language. (Oct.) Forecast: Winchester could have a second hardcover bestseller this year with this, boosted by a seven-city author tour. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

KLIATT - Mary Ellen Snodgrass

Winchester's witty, humorous book celebrates the world's most authoritative compendium on English words and idioms from the emergence of the language from Anglo-Saxon or Old English. The text is a worthy companion piece to Winchester's best-selling biography, The Professor and the Madman (1998). He follows the history of the English language with a salute to forerunner linguists Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster and to the contributors who volunteered literary research and summaries of each word's beginning and acquired meanings through the medieval, Renaissance, and modern eras. The immense five-decade task required the organizational skills of scholarly geologist James Murray, the editor-in-chief who hired experts like Anglo-Saxon specialist J.R.R. Tolkien, Civil War surgeon William Chester Minor, the eccentric Frederick James Furnivall, and a clutch of lexicographers at the Ashmolean Library to provide vision and accuracy in assuring dictionary users the most fastidious examination of every word in the language. Extending to 15,490 pages and 22 volumes, the OED followed an idiosyncratic entry style that Winchester explains in the epilogue with a two-page contrast to earlier works. This volume is sure to fire the intellectual curiosity of word mavens. KLIATT Codes: A—Recommended for advanced students and adults. 2003, Oxford Univ. Press, 259p. illus. bibliog. index., Ages 17 to adult.

Library Journal

Winchester celebrates the 75th anniversary of the OED by producing a remarkable account of the men who shaped the venerable dictionary, from Samuel Johnson, whose earlier dictionary established the standard; to Dean Trench, who presented a paper championing the need for a new dictionary; to various flamboyant characters, such as William Chester Minor, a word collector who worked from a mental institution and the "madman" in Winchester's The Professor and the Madman; the eccentric and disorganized Frederick James Furnivall; W.J.E. Crane, so ornery that lawyers were needed to force him not to burn his collection of O-words; James Murray, who though not formally educated was nevertheless most responsible for seeing the project through; and others. Winchester wonderfully commemorates this monumental record of English and ultimately produces an inspired story of conflict, madness, genius, and inspiration so amusing that at times it reads like fiction-but it isn't. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.-Carolyn M. Craft, Longwood Univ., Farmville, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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