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| HarperCollins |
Simon Winchester
1998
The Summary
"It is known as one of the greatest literary achievements in the history of English letters. 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 creations 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.
"The Professor and the Madman is an extraordinary tale of madness and genius, and the incredible obsessions of two men at the heart of the Oxford English Dictionary and literary history. With riveting insight and detail, Simon Winchester crafts a fascinating glimpse into one man's tortured mind and his contribution to another man's magnificent dictionary."
The Good
I greatly enjoyed reading The Professor and the Madman. I'd seen it in passing when I was collecting a stack of books and, of course, the subtitle caught my attention almost immediately. After all, what did murder have to do with Oxford English Dictionary--and who was the madman supposedly involved with the entire affair?
I certainly had to find out.
Simon Winchester's book is an interesting creation. Part narrative and part biography, it reminisces of Erik Larson's work in that it manages to make history sparkle, so to speak. It makes history accessible and amusing, taking something that sometimes goes dry and stale, making it into a fascinating and informative epic. Personally, I loved every bit of it. It appealed to my love of language and my love of history, offering me glimpses into both the creation and history of the language and the history behind one of the English language's most comprehensive book.
Yes, I found it was sometimes slow going. (I'm very prone to distraction, I'm afraid, and I had a lot of books on my mind at the time.) However, I loved reading about Professor Murray and Dr. Minor. Murray and Minor were both brilliant individuals. Intelligent and bright and innovative, they were the backbone of the Oxford English Dictionary and they helped to make it the incredible repository of information it is today, but they walked two very different paths.
Minor was a man of means, a gentleman of wealth who became a medical doctor and participated in the America Civil War; Murray was an incredibly bright scholar, a self-taught gentleman who eventually became a professor at Oxford and editor for the OED. Minor's experiences, especially the trauma he faced during the Civil War, helped to shape him in later years and eventually brought him into contact with the dictionary project, but Minor, while fascinating, was not nearly as intriguing to me as James Murray.
Murray received only a rudimentary education, before he was forced out of school to help support his family; however, he eventually continued his education, learned several different languages--including German, French, Latin, et cetera--and became one of the most notable gentlemen at Oxford after he became a professor and an editor for the OED. In his studies, he even trained local cattle to respond when he called to them in Latin, which made him more than passably interesting in my book.
Overall, I enjoyed reading The Professor and the Madman. Wonderfully detailed and crafted with remarkable narrative quality, Winchester's book was a fantastic read. It appealed to me on so many levels as a reader by making history and the English language accessible, but I might be biased. I found it simply the perfect combination of weird, wacky history and interweaving narrative.
The Bad
No complaints.
Honestly, it was an enjoyable book for me. As a former English major, I was fascinated by the history of the language and the creation of the OED. Granted, others who don't care as much for history and English may not find is as interesting or amusing as I did, but I think other readers will be able to appreciate the effort and skill Winchester put into his book.
The Ugly
Much of the Winchester's book wasn't very grim. Yes, Dr. Minor was entirely mad; yes, he was put into an asylum for the criminally insane; and, yes, his psychosis was alarming and sometimes violent (i.e. the murder of George Merritt), but I found it wasn't particularly graphic or stomach-turning. Nothing one hasn't heard before in a history book.
However, the bit about "self-abuse" (masturbation) and self-mutilation was a bit much, and I found myself feeling a little squeamish.
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