The Dictionary Of Lost Words

Author: Pip Williams

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $22.99 AUD
  • : 9781922400277
  • : Affirm
  • : Affirm Press
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  • : 0.3
  • : September 2020
  • : 13.90 cmmm
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  • : 22.99
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  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

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  • : Pip Williams
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  • : Paperback
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  • : English
  • : 823.92
  • : near fine
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  • : 384
  • : FV
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Barcode 9781922400277
9781922400277

Description

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.  

Awards

Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2022 Winner of the NSW Premier's People's Choice Award 2021 Indie Book Awards 2021 Book of the Year & Debut Fiction ABA Nielsen Booksellers Choice Shortlist 2021    Shortlisted NSW Premier's Literary Award for the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction 2021

Author description

Pip was born in London, grew up in Sydney and now calls the Adelaide Hills home. She is co-author of the book Time Bomb: Work Rest and Play in Australia Today (New South Press, 2012) and in 2017 she wrote One Italian Summer, a memoir of her family's travels in search of the good life, which was published with Affirm Press to wide acclaim. In The Dictionary of Lost Words she combines her talent for historical research with beautiful storytelling. She has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary and found a tale of missing words and the lives of women lived between the lines.