Bibliofreakblog

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

This book was originally published in the U.K as “The Surgeon of Crowthorn: A Tale of Murder, Madness, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary”.  The U.S. publishers kept the subtitle, but changed the main title to “The Professor and the Madman”, which, I have to say, I kind of like better.  Anyways, a rose by any other name, right?

And the subtitle, either side of the pond, is dead on (that pun was completely unintended and I apologize).

It turns out that one of the biggest contributors to the much revered (hallowed, even, in my opinion) OED was criminally insane.

W.C. Minor was a doctor in the American Civil War.  After the war, he went to England, and stayed in a particularly shady part of London.  Long story short, dude was crazy and killed someone.

For the rest of his life, he resided in an asylum.  By shear coincidence he heard about Dr. James Murray’s work on the first, all encompassing, etymologically based dictionary.  A philologist’s wet dream.

Minor spent most of his time in the asylum finding the oldest uses of words in written language and submitting them to Murray’s project.  Remember that this was back before computers–or even three ring binders.  Minor created a sort of rolodex to organize his work in his little cell.

Now here’s the part that amazes me: for twenty years Minor and Murray corresponded, but Murray never knew his best contributor was a resident of a criminally insane asylum.  Minor had been evasive every time Murray invited him up to Oxford.  Finally after two decades Murray came to see Minor, and found himself in a high security mental institution.  The reason I find this surprising is that they didn’t really live far from each other, and I think someone would have noticed that they had no mutual friends.  But I guess not.  

Winchester writes in a fun way, while shedding light on the great undertaking that was the OED.  It’s a good read for anyone interested in books, language, history, crazy people, etc.

The only thing that Winchester fails to answer is why the fuck the OED charges $300/year for it’s subscription.  Ah well, some things are just beyond human understanding.

If you like this book/author, you might like:

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (NF) by Simon Winchester
Reading the OED: One Man, One year, and 27,730 pages (CNF) by Ammon Shea
Stories of English (NF) by David Crystal
Just a Phrase I’m Going Through: My Life in Language (CNF) by David Crystal
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (NF) by David Crystal
The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left (NF) by David Crystal
The Search for the Perfect Language (NF) by Umberto Eco
The First Word (NF) by Christine Kenealy
The Unfolding of Language (NF) by Guy Deutscher
Eats, Shoots, and Leves (NF) by Lynn Truss
Consider the Lobster (CNF) by David Foster Wallace
Empires of the World: A Language History of the World (NF) by Nicholas Ostler
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language (NF) by John Mcwhorter
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English (NF) by John McWhorter
The Story of English (NF) by Robert McCrum 
Do You Speak American? (NF) by Robert MacNeil 
Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World (CNF) by Vicki Myron
The Man Who Loved Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus  (NF) by Joshua Kendall
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (NF) by Niall Ferguson  

Other works by Simon Winchester*:

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (NF) 
The Man Who Loved China (AKA Bomb, Book, and Compass) (NF)
Simon Winchester’s Calcutta (CNF)
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded (NF)
The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology (NF)
The Fracture Zone: A Return to the Balkans (CNF)
The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze and Back in Chinese Time (CNF)
Korea: A Walk Through a Land of Miracles (CNF)
Outposts: Journeys to the Relics of the British Empire (AKA The Sun Never Sets) (CNF)
A Crack at the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 (NF)

 *NOTE: This list is not exhaustive.  For the most part, in only includes works still in print in the U.S., though you can still find many of his other works used.