1. The professor and the madman : a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the
Oxford English Dictionary / Simon Winchester -- New York : HarperCollins, 1998.
Table of Contents:
1. The Dead of Night in Lambeth Marsh
2. The Man Who Taught Latin to Cattle
3. The Madness of War
4. Gathering Earth’s Daughters
5. The Big Dictionary Conceived
6. The Scholar in Cell Block Two
7. Entering the Lists
8. Annulated, Art, Brick-Tea, Buckwheat
9. The Meeting of Minds
10. The Unkindest Cut
11. Then Only the Monuments
Back cover:
“The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an
extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable
men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary--and literary history. The
compilation of the OED, begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever
undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor
James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W.C. Minor, had submitted more than ten
thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light:
Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the
criminally insane.”
From the Preface:
“Popular myth has it that one of the most remarkable conversations in modern literary
history took place on a cool and misty late autumn afternoon in 1896, in the small village
of Crowthorne in the county of Berkshire. One of the parties to the colloquy was the
formidable Dr. James Murray, the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary … He had
traveled fifty miles by train from Oxford to meet an enigmatic figure named Dr. W.C.
Minor, who was among the most prolific of the thousands of volunteer contributors
whose labors lay at the core of the dictionary’s creation … A solemn servant showed the
lexicographer upstairs, and into a book-lined study, where behind an immense mahogany
desk stood a man of undoubted importance. Dr. Murray bowed gravely … ‘A very good
afternoon to you, sir. I am Dr. James Murray … you must be, kind sir, my most assiduous
helpmeet, Dr. W.C. Minor?’ There was a brief pause, a momentary air of mutual
embarrassment … And then the man behind the desk cleared his throat, and he spoke: ‘I
regret, kind sir, that I am not. It is not at all as you suppose. I am in fact the Governor of
the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Dr. Minor is most certainly here. But he is an
inmate. He has been a patient here for more than twenty years. He is our longest-staying
resident.’”