Williams - The Dictionary of Lost Words : A Novel (2020)

In The Dictionary of Lost Words Pip Williams 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.

In 1901, the word 'Bondmaid' was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary.

This is the story of the girl who stole it.

Esme is born into a world of words.

Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the 'Scriptorium', a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary.

Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard.

One day a slip of paper containing the word 'bondmaid' flutters to the floor.

Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house.

Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men.

They help her make sense of the world.

Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women's experiences often go unrecorded.

While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, secretly, 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.

It's a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape the world and our experience of it.

Pip Williams 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 (NewSouth Books, 2012) and in 2017 she wrote One Italian Summer , a memoir of her familys travels in search of the good life, which was published with Affirm Press. Pip has also published travel articles, book reviews, flash fiction and poetry.

In The Dictionary of Lost Words Pip 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. It is her first novel.

What a novel of words, their adventure and their capacity to define and, above all, challenge the world. There will not be this year a more original novel published. I just know it.

TOM KENEALLY, author of Schindlers Ark and The Daughters of Mars

The Dictionary of Lost Words fulfils all the promises of the best historical fiction a thoroughly original concept married to beautifully rendered characters, immersive setting and intensely satisfying storytelling. Touching on the suffragette movement and the Great War, Pip Williams meticulously imagined novel offers a portrait of an unforgettable woman resilient, humble, generous, self-knowing and always strong-spined who invents a provocative solution to the too frequent exclusion of womens lives and cares from the official register.

MELISSA ASHLEY, author of The Birdmans Wife and The Bee and the Orange Tree

Published by Affirm Press in 2020

28 Thistlethwaite Street, South Melbourne, VIC 3205.

www.affirmpress.com.au

Text and copyright Pip Williams, 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

without prior permission of the publisher.

Title: The Dictionary of Lost Words / Pip Williams, author.

ISBN: 9781925972597 (paperback)

Cover and internal design by Lisa White

Typeset in 12/18 Minion Pro by J&M Typesetting

For Ma and Pa

Before the lost word, there was another. It arrived at the Scriptorium in a second-hand envelope, the old address crossed out and Dr Murray, Sunnyside, Oxford , written in its place.

It was Das job to open the post and mine to sit on his lap, like a queen on her throne, and help him ease each word out of its folded cradle. Hed tell me what pile to put it on and sometimes hed pause, cover my hand with his, and guide my finger up and down and around the letters, sounding them into my ear. Hed say the word, and I would echo it, then hed tell me what it meant.

This word was written on a scrap of brown paper, its edges rough where it had been torn to match Dr Murrays preferred dimensions. Da paused, and I readied myself to learn it. But his hand didnt cover mine, and when I turned to hurry him, the look on his face made me stop; as close as we were, he looked far away.

I turned back to the word and tried to understand. Without his hand to guide me, I traced each letter.

What does it say? I asked.

Lily , he said.

Like Mamma?

Like Mamma.

Does that mean shell be in the Dictionary?

In a way, yes.

Will we all be in the Dictionary?

No.

Why?

I felt myself rise and fall on the movement of his breath.

A name must mean something to be in the Dictionary.

I looked at the word again. Was Mamma like a flower? I asked.

Da nodded. The most beautiful flower.

He picked up the word and read the sentence beneath it. Then he turned it over, looking for more. Its incomplete, he said. But he read it again, his eyes flicking back and forth as if he might find what was missing. He put the word down on the smallest pile.

Da pushed his chair back from the sorting table. I climbed off his lap and readied myself to hold the first pile of slips. This was another job I could help with, and I loved to see each word find its place among the pigeon-holes. He picked up the smallest pile, and I tried to guess where Mamma would go. Not too high and not too low, I sang to myself. But instead of putting the words in my hand, Da took three long steps towards the fire grate and threw them into the flames.

There were three slips. When they left his hand, each was danced by the draft of heat to a different resting place. Before it had even landed, I saw lily begin to curl.

I heard myself scream as I ran towards the grate. I heard Da bellow my name. The slip was writhing.

I reached in to rescue it, even as the brown paper charred and the letters written on it turned to shadows. I thought I might hold it like an oak leaf, faded and winter-crisp, but when I wrapped my fingers around the word, it shattered.