Dictionary of lost words : a novel, The. (141924613) Check Availability

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20 regular print copies

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and curious, she spends her childhood in the "Scriptorium," where her father and a team of lexicographers are collecting words for the first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme is to be, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper with the word "bondmaid" drops to the floor. She picks it up, and learns that it means slave-girl, she hides it from the OED and collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men. As she grows up, she finds that words relating to women's and common folks' experiences often go unrecorded. So she begins her own dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words and she leaves the shelter of the university, to meet the people whose words will fill those pages. 400 pages.