Author(s): Simon Winchester

Reference

The making of the Oxford English Dictionary was a remarkable achievement, the story of which has been aching to be told. Who better to take on the challenge than the talented story-teller Simon Winchester? With his characteristic gift for bringing history alive, in The Meaning of Everything Simon Winchester charts the fascinating life of the OED leading up to the appointment of the first editor, James Murray, in 1879, through to the OED's triumphant publication in 1928 and beyond. The Meaning of Everything is a must for anyone with an interest in language and words. By the author of bestselling The Surgeon of Crowthorne and The Map that Changed the WorldThe first ever history of the creation of the OED, using material from the Oxford University Press archivesPlaces the making of the dictionary in contextWritten in a engaging style, further enlivened with entertaining descriptions of the myriad characters involved in the making of the dictionaryStory complemented with 30 black-and-white images of earlier dictionaries and photographs of the people and places that played a part in this fascinating tale

Inscriptions on front endpaper