The surgeon of Crowthorne : a tale of murder, madness and the Oxford English dictionary

Product Description The making of the "Oxford English Dictionary" was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest volunteers was a W C Minor who astonished everyone by refusing to come to Oxford to receive his congratulations. In the end, James Murray, the "OED's" editor, went to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him. What he found was incredible - Minor was a millionaire American civil war surgeon turned lunatic, imprisoned in Broadmoor Asylum for murder and yet who dedicated his entire cell-bound life to work on the English language. About the Author Simon Winchester has had an award-winning 20 year career as Guardian correspondent. He lives in New York and is the Asia-Pacific Editor for Conde Nast Traveler and contributes to a number of American magazines, as well as the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator and the BBC. He has written numerous books. THE RIVER AT THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD (Viking 1997/Penguin 1998) has been shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book Award. General,United States,English language - Etymology,Language Arts & Disciplines,United States - History - Civil War; 1861-1865 - Veterans,Lexicographers - Great Britain,Minor; William Chester,Murray; James Augustus Henry; Sir; 1837-1915,Linguistics,Lexicographers,Psychiatric hospital patients,English language,English language - Lexicography - History - 19th century,Psychiatric hospital patients - Great Britain,Murray; James Augustus Henry,New English dictionary on historical principles,Oxford English dictionary 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 1999, mass market paperback reprint edition, Penguin, NY. 207 pages. "An extraordinary tale." Great book, with true characters who seem fictional, indeed. Two men correspond for 20 years. They were, in fact, writing what was to become The Oxford English Dictionary. Finally, the one researcher decides to visit his co-correspondent. Upon reaching his destination, he is told "Dr. Minor is most certainly here. He is an inmate at the asylum. He has been a patient here for more than 20 years." Fascinating title.