What better place to discuss a book about words than our own local “house of words”, the Kirk-Bear Canyon Library!

This story explores the development of the Oxford English Dictionary through the lens of gender, historical events, and social structure. Williams uses real and imaginary characters to tell the story, which spans the women’s suffrage movement and the beginning of the Great War.

The story begins with Esme, a curious and good-natured child who spends her days at the ‘Scriptorium’, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers are gathering words for the first edition of the Dictionary. From a hiding place beneath the table, Esme collects words that are misplaced or discarded by the male lexicographers. These words fill gaps in Esme’s life, and help make sense of her world (her mother is dead and she is cared for by her father and a servant, Lizzie.