cover image Treasure-House of the Language: The Living OED

Treasure-House of the Language: The Living OED

Charlotte Brewer. Yale University Press, $35 (334pp) ISBN 978-0-300-12429-3

An expansive treatment of the making of the world's most comprehensive dictionary, this book begins where Sir James Murray, creator of the 1879 edition, left off. Producing the dictionary proved to be an ongoing process that defied projected publication dates and Brewer outlines in detail the resulting conflict between the Oxford publishers and the lexicographers. A highlight is the complicated personality of J.M Wyllie, who took over the project in 1929 and whose intense dedication to the dictionary led to a crippling mental illness. While brewer describes the process of creating definitions and supplying quotations, she focuses more on the individuals involved than the lexicographical procedure. The middle chapters of the book are devoted to the many projects, spawned by the OED, that tackle the daunting task of keeping the original as current and complete as possible. The publishers continue to squirm as the lexicographers make demands for supplements and revisions. The final chapter deals extensively with one of the company's smartest accomplishment: their decision to introduce an electronic version of the dictionary in 1986, years before the major Internet boom. This dense volume is ideal for readers seeking a very detailed account of the making of this landmark text.