| Summary: While the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is one of the most respected and revered dictionaries in the world, few people know the story of the madman, Dr. William Chester Minor, who submitted more than 10,000 entries to the Oxford English Dictionary, and the professor turned OED editor, James Murray, who accepted them. |
The compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary was a monumental task, and ultimately took more than seventy years to complete. However, many people are unaware of a fascinating story behind the scenes of the dictionary’s compilation, a tale of irony and madness surrounding an American expatriate surgeon named Dr. William Chester Minor. Dr. Minor’s story - and the way in which it relates to the OED - is chronicled in Simon Winchester’s book, The Professor and the Madman.
Dr. Minor was a veteran of the American Civil War, and had seen incredible horrors, particularly on the Wilderness battlefield in Orange County, Virginia. After the war, in an attempt to escape the insanity he felt creeping in, he moved to England for a change of scenery. About a year after moving there, he shot an innocent man, thinking the man had broken into his living quarters. At the trial, he was found not guilty on grounds of insanity, a common practice at the time, and was “detained in safe custody until Her Majesty’s Pleasure be known.”
A few years later, in 1878, Professor James Murray became the third editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and sent out a call to intellectuals all over England for submissions to the dictionary. He started receiving many submissions from the American expatriate, all of excellent quality, and wished to meet the man. He invited Minor to travel to Oxford many times, and Minor always politely refused, offering no explanation why. Despite this, the two men developed a fond and respectful relationship with each other, completely through correspondence.
Finally, in 1896, after receiving nearly 10,000 submissions from Minor, Murray took it upon himself to meet his esteemed colleague. He took a train from Oxford to Sandhurst, Berkshire, about fifty miles away, where a coach was waiting to take him to the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, the return address on the letters from Dr. Minor. Logically, Murray had assumed that Dr. Minor worked at the asylum. Murray was led into the imposing brick building and taken an office clearly belonging to an important man. Assuming he was facing Dr. Minor, Murray introduced himself, only to find that the man behind the desk was not Dr. Minor, but the Governor of the asylum. The Governor broke the news to Murray that Dr. Minor was indeed in the building, but as an inmate, not a staff member, and had been in residence there for over twenty years.
Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman examines in detail the reasons for Dr. Minor’s fall into insanity, as well as the initial meeting and staunch friendship of the two intellectuals. Some aspects of Dr. Minor’s insanity are rather visceral, and may be difficult to stomach for some readers, but the book paints a fascinating picture of a mad genius and the man who was willing to look beyond the madness to share a friendship and an intellectual fascination with words.
For those who are more interested in the decades-long process of building the OED itself, Winchester has also put out a second book on the subject, The Meaning of Everything.
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