The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

$7.99

The Dictionary of Lost Words

  • By: Pip Williams
  • Narrated by: Imogen Sage
  • Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
  • Categories: Literature & Fiction

Publisher's Summary

In 1901, the word bondmaid was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.

Motherless and irrepressibly curious, Esme spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers are gathering words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day, she sees a slip containing the word bondmaid flutter to the floor unclaimed. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. 

Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others - that words and meanings relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. She begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Set when the women’s suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men.

Please note: based on listener feedback, we have updated the audio with corrected pronunciations.

©2020 Pip Williams (P)2020 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Customer Reviews

1-5 of 1 review

  • Anonymous User

    Please re-record the epilogue so that ‘Kaurna’ is pronounced correctly

    re-record the epilogue so that ‘Kaurna’ is pronounced correctly. For a book that is so focused on words and their importance, it’s embarrassing and grating to hear the name of the people indigenous to the Adelaide plains pronounced incorrectly

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    84 people found this helpful

    August 7, 2020

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