Everything about this book drew me in. The title is intriguing, the cover art is fun. Can you see the suitcase and the bits of paper that make up the words of the title. The Dictionary of Lost Words.
It’s a stand alone novel, though a companion sequel has been added since my copy was published in 2020. The reviews printed on the cover laud the author’s extensive research which is evident on every page.
The story begins with a small child, Esme, who dives into a fire to retrieve a paper with the only word she knows. Lily. The name of her dead mother. Esme’s fingers bear the scars of her childish love for the rest of her life.
Esme’s father is a lexicographer, one of a team of men who worked tirelessly to compile what would become the Oxford English Dictionary. As Esme plays under their desks, the men collect letters, cut outs, pages from books, and anything else people submit with definitions of words and examples of how those words are used. They pin the examples together, alphabetize them, and place them carefully in fascicles – small sections – in the shelves that line the large room where they work. Their workroom is called the Scriptorium.
One day, Esme catches one of the papers dropped from the desks above. It has a word on it – bondmaid. She slips it into her pocket and then into an empty trunk. With that, she has the first entry in her Dictionary of Lost Words.
Soon, Esme grows too tall to play under the desks. She matures, goes to school, and enters puberty. But her love for words never changes, and she begins to carry slips of paper in her pockets so she can “catch” new words from people. She collects words from all over the city of Oxford, but her most prolific contributors are the common people in the marketplace. She quickly realizes words have different meanings for different people, especially women.
Esme gradually becomes involved with a group of suffragettes who seem to question the fundamentals of her upbringing. She is faced with decisions about what is right and good. She makes mistakes. She suffers pain and loss. She continues to collect words, stuffing them into her trunk along with other mementoes of her happiest and saddest moments.
As we read The Dictionary of Lost Words, we grow with Esme. We laugh with her, and we cry with her. With her, we question the norms of society. We recognize the importance of the women whom Esme stopped to hear. In her own way, she gave the women around her a voice they’d never had before by writing down and defining their words.
The author, Pip Williams, started writing The Dictionary of Lost Words with this premise: If everyone involved in defining the words were men, then how well did that first edition of Oxford English Dictionary represent the way women used words? Through research, she found the story of a word that was not printed in the first edition of the dictionary: bondmaid. The entries for that words went missing, and it’s still a mystery where they are a century later. That mystery sparked the story of Esme and her Dictionary of Lost Words. Williams weaves in true historical figures like Sir James Murray, one of the chief editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, his daughters Elsie and Rosfrith, who also worked on the dictionary, and Edith Thompson, a volunteer contributor and proofreader for the dictionary. Though Esme is fictitious, the things she experienced during her life in the book were all too real for many women of the time period, 1880s-1920s.
I highly recommend The Dictionary of Lost Words if you enjoy good historical fiction, however I have two words of caution:
(spoiler alert ahead)
First, there are a few uses of curse words that I do not like to read, however they are not used as curses in the text. Rather, they are listed, defined, and then the story moves on. Also, one of Esme’s contributors is a rough old woman who enjoys embarrassing Esme with crude words. Early in the story, one of the lexicographers said, “Our job, surely, is to chronicle, not judge.” And that is what Esme does – she chronicles the words and doesn’t judge. However, if you do not like books with certain ugly words, you will want to refrain from reading this book.
Second, about halfway through the book, Esme meets a man who takes advantage of her. She is consenting but naive. The chapter is not graphic, however, she ends up pregnant. In fear, she considers terminating the baby. She even goes so far as to visit a woman who could help her do that, but the woman tells her she is too far along. Instead, Esme leaves town to stay with her aunt until the baby is born so she can preserve her reputation. When I got to this chapter, I was very displeased and almost stopped reading the book. I felt it was pushing the boundaries too far for a historical fiction. But I’m glad I continued reading and finished the book. Esme’s pregnancy was dealt with tastefully, and I wept with her when she gave the baby away to a couple who could have no children of their own. I decided that as much as I don’t care to read about pregnancy before marriage and abortion, these have been experiences of women since the beginning of time. If Esme was to represent women and their words to the Dictionary, she must also suffer like them.
Pip Williams’ style is endearing. She uses word pictures like flowers strewn throughout her book. Esme’s wit made me laugh many times. But Williams shines most in the way she uses actions rather than words to describe sorrow. My heart broke, and I cried several times for Esme.
The Epilogue sends the reader forward in time to the 1980s and the introduction of the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s life is honored. Her words are given their place in history. A retiring woman rises, looks into the eager faces of an audience of new lexicographers and tells them the story of Esme. Her mother. An absolutely beautiful way to end this story.
Have you read The Dictionary of Lost Words? Did you have a favorite part? I hope you will share your thoughts in the comments below.
