I am bowled over by Sarah Ogilvie's book and have not been able to put it down. It is utterly fascinating, entertaining, astonishing and as clever as a box of monkeys. I love the way it is laid out alphabetically, with the most alluring chapter headings and characters who circle round the hub of the mighty OED. Every home should have a copy, every school should award it as a prize. I completely love it: a massive accomplishment * Joanna Lumley * Enthralling and exuberant, Sarah Ogilvie tells the surprising story of the making of the OED. Philologists, fantasists, crackpots, criminals, career spinsters, suffragists, and Australians: here is a wonder-book for word-lovers * Jeanette Winterson * 'An erudite and vivid exploration of the origins of the OED in the first crowdsourcing of contributions from thousands of individuals - including murderers, lunatics and cannibals. Marvellous, witty and wholly original' * Alan Rusbridger * This history, sourced from the author's discovery of the address books of the Dictionary's famous editor, James Murray, is as fascinating as the array of wonderful words they [the Dictionary People] filled their dictionary with * Big Issue *Hottest Reads of Summer 2023* * Fun and fascinating * The Bookseller *

Sarah Ogilvie teaches at the University of Oxford, and specializes in language, dictionaries, and technology. As a lexicographer she has been an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary and was Chief Editor of Oxford Dictionaries in Australia. As a technologist she has worked in Silicon Valley at Lab 126, Amazon's innovation lab, where she was part of the team that developed the Kindle. She originally studied computer science and mathematics before taking her doctorate in Linguistics at the University of Oxford, and then taught at Cambridge and Stanford.