'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.' (Publication summary)
The Dictionary of Lost Words
2023
Mulgrave
:
Affirm Press
,
2024
25304562
2023
single work
drama
'It’s 1886 and the very first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is being compiled. Four-year-old Esme Nicoll has a front row seat. Well, she’s hiding under the sorting table, anyway. As her father and his male colleagues decide which words stay and which go, Esme collects the discarded (often gendered) scraps to compile her own far more radical, far more magical dictionary.
'A sweeping historical tale in the spirit of The Harp in the South, The Dictionary of Lost Words follows Esme from her childhood in the 1880s, into adulthood at the height of the women’s suffrage movement and the beginning of the First World War.'
Source: Sydney Theatre Company.
Dedication :
For Ma and Pa
Number 8 on the Better Reading's 2001 Top 100
Number 8 on the Better Reading's 2003 Top 100
'Book publicists are important intermediaries in generating earned media attention, creating discoverability opportunities, and getting new books into the hands of potential readers. Despite their important function in book culture, publicists’ labour in producing and framing value in the book industry is often rendered invisible in the industry and scholarly literature, which we trace back to field-defining conceptual models, particularly Robert Darnton’s Communications Circuit (1982). This article draws on interviews with eight Australian publicists to make visible, interrogate, and explain the material and symbolic labour involved in the affective relationship-building and cultural framing work of publicity. This article explores publicists’ day-to-day work, their relationships with authors, colleagues and the media, and publicity’s function in contemporary book culture. Book publicists are important cultural intermediaries: they are integral to the economic and social contexts of publishing, and influence and shape cultural tastes and value through strategic promotional work, resulting in considerable effects across the domains of production and reception.' (Publication summary)
'A best-selling novel set during the women’s suffrage movement is having its theatrical premiere, writes Stephanie Sekulovska When Pip Williams told people she was writing a novel about the Oxford English Dictionary, their eyes would glaze over at her in pity. Loved ones and colleagues thought she was doomed to failure.' (Introduction)
'At one point early on in this excellent debut novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, set in Oxford 120 years ago, it appears as though Esme may have to choose between getting married and becoming an editor, a choice that doesn’t seem as outdated as it should. Esme actually has no interest in getting married just then, whereas – like her father – she has a natural predilection for words.' (Introduction)
'This is a story about words, but not just any words. Pip Williams's novel The Dictionary of Lost Words centers around the creation of the English language's most famous collection of words: The Oxford English Dictionary, or OED. Self-proclaimed as "the definitive record of the English language," today this dictionary contains over six hundred thousand words, boasts three and a half million quotations that help define these words, and represents over one thousand years of the English language.' (Introduction)
'A best-selling novel set during the women’s suffrage movement is having its theatrical premiere, writes Stephanie Sekulovska When Pip Williams told people she was writing a novel about the Oxford English Dictionary, their eyes would glaze over at her in pity. Loved ones and colleagues thought she was doomed to failure.' (Introduction)
'Just to work from "A" to "ant" took the original Oxford English Dictionary team around 10 years.'
