A Concise History of the Oxford English Dictionary - Paperback

by Rob Walters (Author)

At a grand party to celebrate completion of the first edition of the Dictionary the Prime Minister of the day called the achievement 'the greatest enterprise of its kind in history'. The Times greeted the second edition as 'The greatest work in dictionary making ever undertaken'. And The New York Times topped that with 'The gigantic total picture of the English language...an epic achievement.'Wow! So what's the story? How did it start? What preceded it? Who did the work? Why did it take so long? How did Oxford get involved? And why is the work never finished? This concise history will give you answers to those questions and more in an account which naturally focuses on Oxford, home to the Dictionary for 130 years. Written in the centenary year of the death of its most famous editor, this book celebrates the man whose name is, above all others, synonymous with the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary: James Murray.

Author Biography

I've been writing for years, I even enjoyed 'composition' as a little child in my first life. I wrote stories for my own children when they were young, but then clamped my imagination during my second life whilst writing technical stuff and publishing a newsletter for many years. In my third life the restraint has gone, the imagination runs free and I write what I want to - I hope that you like some of it. In my past life in the technical world I was often puzzled by colleagues who hated writing in the way that some people hate maths.They were forced to write whereas the pen had to be wrested from my hand. My first full book was published in 1991, It followed many technical papers and articles and was followed by two newsletters which I edited, and mostly wrote, for the next ten years. Four more technical books appeared after which I abandoned the world of technology and began doing my own thing. I travelled, became an Oxford city guide, and wrote a number of books and articles, some fiction, some non-fiction. You can see my books and more at www.robsbookshop.com -