The Professor And The Madman

Chapter 5 explores the true beginning of the creation of the OED. While the achievements of the creators of the previous English dictionaries, even Johnson’s enormous and brilliant 1755 work, were prodigious, their work was now obsolete. The proposal for a more all-encompassing work came in Trench’s famous speech at the Philological Society meeting in which he declared that a dictionary should be “an inventory of the language” (104) and its creator should be a historian. Because of the enormity of such a project, Trench also presented a revolutionary idea—what we would today call crowdsourcing—arguing that “it would be necessary to recruit a team—moreover, a huge one—probably comprising hundreds and hundreds of unpaid amateurs, all of them working as volunteers” (106).

Herbert Coleridge was appointed editor of the dictionary, originally titled A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. However, Coleridge died shortly after assuming the position and Furnivall took over. Perhaps because of his many outside interests, Furnivall was a disappointing editor whose inability to keep the volunteers enthused nearly killed the project. Furnivall passed the editorship on to his protégé Murray, who breathing new life into the project. In 1879, the Oxford University Press agreed to publish the work and Murray appealed to the English-speaking and English-reading public for a “vast fresh corps of volunteers” (113). 

Chapter 6 begins with the word “Bedlam,” a term as outdated as its definitions—lunatic asylum or madhouse. Winchester also opens the chapter with the actual case notes compiled for Minor on the very day he arrived at Broadmoor —April 17, 1872. The notes reveal that Minor claimed to have “been the victim of persecution for years” and that “persons unknown are trying to injure him, with poison” (116).

Minor’s incarceration was comfortable because he was high-born, educated, and wealthy. He had freedom to paint, drink wine or bourbon, and collect books. Minor’s delusions continued to worsen; however, he became truly remorseful about George Merrett, the man he had murdered. Minor began helping Merrett’s widow, Eliza, and her children financially and she became a regular visitor at Broadmoor, bringing Minor parcels of books from antiquarian dealers in London. This development is likely how Minor saw one of Murray’s appeals for volunteers. Minor volunteered his services “with alacrity and enthusiasm” (129). Though Minor corresponded from Broadmoor, Murray gave little thought to who Minor might be. 

Chapter 7 explores the meticulous work required of Murray and the volunteers in creating the dictionary, and the effect that the work had on Minor in the asylum. Minor underwent a sea change in his personality and temperament—the academic work occupied his time and he realized its potential value to history. Moreover, Minor saw the project as “a token of the further forgiveness and understanding that Eliza Merrett’s visits to him had already suggested. The invitation seemed a long-sought badge of renewed membership in the society from which he had been so long estranged” (133).

Volunteers established catchwords, and then found illustrative quotations in other texts to provide the meaning or the use of the words. Minor had established a vast library in his cell, had a great deal of leisure time, and possessed astonishing accuracy and an eye for detail. Murray’s staff praised Minor as “very good at his job, very quick, and […] an indispensable member of the great new dictionary team” (144). 

Starting in the spring of 1885, Minor sent his work to Murray every month, and then every week: “before long the gentle shower of paper had turned into a raging blizzard, one that was to howl up from Crowthorne unceasingly for almost all of the next twenty years” (146). Oxford had demanded that the dictionary be divided into fascicles, or installments, published and sold separately, so that the project could produce revenue during its creation. The first fascicle was published in early 1884; the rest came out over the next 44 years.

The first real contact between Murray and Minor came about because of the word art: When Murray officially requested volunteers find quotations that conveyed its various meanings, other volunteers sent in one or two, but Minor sent in 27. Through their correspondence, Murray noticed that unlike other readers, Minor preferred to work on words for the dictionary’s current volume, rather than future volumes—Minor “wants desperately to know that he is being helpful. He wants to feel involved” (156).

When the Volume 1, A-B, was finished in 1888, Murray’s team was so grateful to Minor that they thanked him in print as Dr. W.C. Minor of Crowthorne. The team, and Murray in particular, wondered more and more who this “brilliant, strange, exacting man” (160) was. With Crowthorne only 40 miles from Oxford, how was it that Minor never made the trip to see the work or meet them? A passing scholar-librarian’s remark about how kind Murray was to “poor Dr. Minor” (161) finally revealed who Dr. Minor was and why he was corresponding from Crowthorne.