The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Oxford English Dictionary

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The history of word collection, origins and philological research into first usage was nothing short of “warm butter on hot bread” awesome and I gobbled up every second of it. Please give me a full book on this someday…squeeeeee. These discussions about the research methods and the comprehensive aspect of the undertaken begun in 1857 on the OED was mind-boggling. I also particularly enjoyed the distinctions drawn between the heterogeneous linguistic “melting pot” that is the English language and the relatively homogenous, strictly pure bred French language. Though Minor was held in Broadmoor for the criminally insane, he had money and, therefore, could enjoy more luxury than the normal inmate. In fact, he rented a second cell, and that became his sitting room and library. He paid another inmate to build him beautiful, teak bookshelves. His wealth enabled him to also buy expensive antique books from bookstores not only in England, but from America as well. Considering the circumstances, he was beyond just comfortable, and if one can ignore the bars on the windows, you might even say he was pampered. Working on the OED helped him focus his mind and probably kept him from spiralling deeper into his own misconceptions. Before reading the book I'd heard vaguely about the mentally disturbed surgeon in Broadmoor who contributed to the making of the dictionary. I presumed the story was largely based on sensationalism, and that in reality he'd probably made a few odd minor submissions at most. But it turns out that this was far from being the case. For about 20 years the surgeon - William Chester Minor - worked intensely, gathering quotations that would help define what different words meant. The dictionary took 70 years to complete, and throughout that time the editors of the dictionary relied on an army of volunteers to augment the work being done in the office in Oxford. William Minor was at the forefront of those volunteers. William Chester Minor", Documents (PDF) (biography), Berkshire, UK: Record office, archived from the original (PDF) on November 28, 2009 . Born in Ceylon in 1834 to missionary parents, he'd spent most of his life in America, going to Yale to study medicine, and then joining the army as a surgeon. He was invalided out with a pension after a few years though, in 1868, as he was showing more and more obvious signs of paranoia. Shortly thereafter he came to London.

One would assume that in a book about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, every single word would be chosen with deliberate care. So why does Winchester refer to the murdered man George Merret's family as "the widow and her brood"???? If Winchester had bothered to look up the OED definition of "brood" he would have known it refers to animals exclusively and is insulting to call a human family a brood. Shame upon shame.I'm not sure that the story of this man, a Doctor from the United States and a veteran of the Civil War imprisoned for life following a murder committed (according to his defence at any rate) in moment of madness and his substantial contribution to the Oxford English Dictionary really justifies the amount of detail given. Fans of the OED may well disagree. Though the idea of creating a complete dictionary of the English language was proposed in 1857. It was not until 1884 that parts of it were ready for publication. It floundered for decades under the weight of its own expectations. It wasn’t until the 1870s, when James Murray was asked to helm the project, that the possibility of achieving such a feat became a real possibility.

By the way, regardless of its present title it is an excellent book deserving of the 5 stars I have given it. And my buying it by honest mistake put me at no great loss. The price was most reasonable. (I might even take this opportunity to re-read it). For centuries, there were atlases, prayer books, histories, romances, and books of science and art, but no English dictionary as we think of one. Shakespeare probably had Cooper’s thesaurus, and word lists grouped by subject, but not a dictionary. I live inside my dictionary (both Urban and Oxford) and my thesaurus and can't imagine the mastery of language that necessary to create works like Shakespeare’s catalog without a linguistic safety net. That revelation alone was worth the price of the book for me and further elevated my profound respect for the masterful word-smiths of antiquity. Winchester, Simon (2000). Der Mann, der die Wörter liebte (in German). Goldmann. ISBN 978-3-442-72643-1.

The Professor and the Madman: The book

The story was already known. The journalist and author Simon Winchester first came across it, he tells us, in Jonathan Green’s 1996 study, Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and th e Di ct ionari es They Made, which sent him on to Caught in th e Web of Words, a biography of James Murray, the first editor – in effect, the maker – of the twelve-volume Oxford English Dictionary, written by Murray’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Murray. Aurandt, Paul (1984). "14. Pen Pals". Paul Harvey's the Rest of the Story. London: Bantam. pp.31–33t. ISBN 978-0-553-25962-9. This was a remarkable book. It might have been a book that didn’t quite seem to know how to end – but I even liked that about it, perhaps because I was so delighted by it that I wasn’t sure I wanted it to end. Professor James Murray was one of the primary editors of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Dr Chester Minor, was one of the primary contributors to the massive project. But Murray did not know that Minor was an inmate in an insane asylum. The Professor and the Madman is aboutSir James Murray. He was the editor-in-chief responsible for creating a comprehensive English language dictionary that would be published by the Oxford University Press.

I would have loved much more on the 3 items above. Still, the story is well written and I think the author’s regard for the subject matter comes through in the prose. Thus, despite my tarnished expectations, I am going to give the doubt’s benefit to the book and award it 3 stars because it's one I would recommend so long as you go into it knowing that you will get heavy doses of Murray and Minor and only a light serving of etymology. An extraordinary tale of madness, genius and obsession, discover the true story of the two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary - and literary history!As a completely fledged bibliopsychotic and an ever-striving-to-be cunning-linguist , I was all aquiver with anticipation to bury my face in this purported history of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Alas, despite being well-written and thoroughly researched, I’m having to fake it a bit to give this a full 3 stars. Some reviewers have commented that the story set out in this book would be dismissed as fantasy if it masqueraded as fiction. That it is a true story makes it quite remarkable. This is a tale from Victorian England in a world of European competition, supreme British confidence and `great' men. Just as the Victorians transformed and tamed their physical surroundings with majestic bridges, overbearing edifices and engineering feats they sought to do the same in the realm of learning. The Oxford English Dictionary was one of the high points of this academic adventure, deserving of greater recognition and understanding.

Winchester's first book, In Holy Terror, was published by Faber and Faber in 1975. The book drew heavily on his first-hand experiences during the turmoils in Ulster. In 1976, Winchester published his second book, American Heartbeat, which dealt with his personal travels through the American heartland. Winchester's third book, Prison Diary, was a recounting of his imprisonment at Tierra del Fuego during the Falklands War and, as noted by Dr Jules Smith, is responsible for his rise to prominence in the United Kingdom. Throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, Winchester produced several travel books, most of which dealt with Asian and Pacific locations including Korea, Hong Kong, and the Yangtze River. To illustrate just how powerful those demons were, consider, for a moment—an exceedingly painful moment—that, at one point, in a desperate attempt to reconcile a burgeoning religiosity with past sexual indiscretions and ongoing sex-fueled delusions, Minor, a doctor by trade, used a penknife to CUT OFF HIS OWN PENIS. Now, look—we all have days (those of us with penises (penii?), I mean) where we’re frustrated with the little guy. I, for example, get agitated when I accidentally mix mine up with the garden hose when doing yard work (which happens more frequently than you’d think on account of similarities in length, girth, and greenness). But, still—the idea of it being severed, let alone severing it myself sans anesthesia and using a turn-of-the-century penknife…well, let’s just say that I’d rather read the dictionary. Move to England and the killing of Merrett [ edit ] The "Lion Brewery" where Minor shot George Merrett He was accepted by the Union Army as a surgeon and may have served at the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, which was notable for the terrible casualties suffered by both sides. There is an unverified story of Minor also being given the task of punishing an Irish soldier in the Union Army by branding him on the face with a D for " deserter" [4] and that this incident later played a role in Minor's delusions. [4] Historians disagree as to whether the Union Army used branding as a punishment for desertion, [5] [6] which means that the story may be fabricated. Moreover, it is unlikely Minor was present at the Battle of the Wilderness, which took place May 5–7, 1864, since his military records place him at Knight USA Hospital in New Haven at that time and do not show him arriving at 2 Division Hospital USA at Alexandria, Virginia, until May 17. [7] Sometimes Winchester is tripped up by the threads of his own embroidery. Because it was annoying me, I noticed he wrote that on 5 November, “darkness had fallen on London soon after half past five” - which is about an hour later than is actually the case. Sloppy, again.There is no index (unforgivable in a book of non-fiction) or bibliography (though there is “further reading”). But thrown into the pot for good measure are also bits of the American Civil War, the part played by the Irish in that war, a discussion of the nature of lunatic asylums and even an incredibly sexy description of the naked, romping girls of Sri Lanka which I can only assume was paid for by the Sri Lankan Tourist Bureau: Barfield, Charles. " 'The Professor And The Madman' Trailer: Mel Gibson & Sean Penn Star In Film That Has Been Involved In Real-Life Legal Drama". ThePlaylist.com. Archived from the original on 9 February 2019 . Retrieved 8 February 2019.