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Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
In Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the towering figures of English literature is revealed with unparalleled immediacy and originality, in a biography to which we owe much of our knowledge of the man himself. Through a series of richly detailed anecdotes, Johnson emerges as a sociable figure, vigorously engaging and fencing with great contemporaries such as Garrick, Goldsmith, Burney and Burke, and of course with Boswell himself. Yet anxieties...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: LG - BL: 7 - AR Pts: 1
Language
English
Formats
Description
One of the most important patriots in post-Revolutionary times. Most readers know Noah Webster for his dictionary masterpieces and his promotion of a living "American Language" that embraces words and idioms from all its immigrant peoples. But he was also the driving force behind universal education for all citizens, including slaves, females, and adult learners. Speaker of twenty languages, he developed the new country's curriculum, writing and publishing...
Author
Publisher
Pantheon Books
Pub. Date
[2017]
Language
English
Description
"Brimming with intelligence and personality, a vastly entertaining account of how dictionaries are made - a must read for word mavens. Have you ever tried to define the word "is?" Do you have strong feelings about the word (and, yes, it is a word) "irregardless?" Did you know that OMG was first used in 1917, in a letter to Winston Churchill? These are the questions that keep lexicographers up at night. While most of us might take dictionaries for...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Perfect Pitch tells the compelling story of Nicolas Slonimsky. A boy prodigy as a pianist, Slonimsky fled pre-Communist Russia, reaching Paris at the height of another revolution-one in music and the arts. His early association with conductor Serge Koussevitzky brought him into contact with many of the era's greatest talents, including Igor Stravinsky and Serge Prokofiev. Emigrating to Boston in 1925, he embarked on a writing career, authoring key...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: LG - BL: 4.1 - AR Pts: 1
Language
English
Formats
Description
The story of "shy young Peter Mark Roget, [for whom] books were the best companions--and it wasn't long before Peter began writing his own book. But he didn't write stories; he wrote lists. Peter took his love for words and turned it to organizing ideas and finding exactly the right word to express just what he thought. His lists grew and grew, eventually turning into one of the most important reference books of all time"--Amazon.com.
7) The word detective: searching for the meaning of it all at the Oxford English Dictionary : a memoir
Author
Publisher
Basic Books
Pub. Date
[2016]
Language
English
Description
"What do you call the part of a dog's back it can't scratch? Can you drink a glass of balderdash? And if, serendipitously, you find yourself in Serendip, then where exactly are you? The answers to all of these questions can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive record of the English language. And there is no better guide to the dictionary's many wonderments, its quirks, and its quiddities than the former chief editor of the OED,...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Peter Winceworth, a disaffected Victorian lexicographer, inserts false entries into a dictionary - violating and subverting the dictionary's authority - in an attempt to assert some sense of individual purpose and artistic freedom. In the present day, Mallory, a young overworked and underpaid intern employed by the dictionary's publishing house, is tasked with uncovering these entries before the work is digitised. As the novel progresses and their...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
A New York Times Notable Book
The Professor and the Madman is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary—and literary history.
The making of the OED was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray,
...Author
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"The Oxford English Dictionary is one of mankind¿́¿s greatest achievements, and yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered. Who were the people behind this unprecedented book? As Sarah Ogilvie reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, an inventor of the first American subway,...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A modern biography of Samuel Johnson that will serve as the definitive work on the legendary British man of letters.
In this groundbreaking portrait of Samuel Johnson, David Nokes positions the great thinker in his rightful place as an active force in the Enlightenment, not a mere recorder or performer, and demonstrates how his interaction with life impacted his work. This is the story of how Johnson struggled to define the English language, why...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 7.9 - AR Pts: 6
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Noah Webster may be best remembered the enormous and ambitious task of writing his famous dictionary, but for him, this accomplishment was a means to an end. His true goal was to streamline the language spoken in our newly formed country so that it could be used as a force to bring people together and be a source of national pride. Though people laughed at his ideas, Webster never doubted himself. In the end, his so-called foolish notions achieved...
17) Everything under
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Words have always mattered to Gretel. As a child, she lived on a canal boat with her mother, and together they invented a language that was just their own. She hasn't seen her mother since the age of sixteen though -almost a lifetime ago- and those memories have faded. Now Gretel works as a lexicographer, updating dictionary entries, which suits her solitary nature. A phone call from the hospital interrupts Gretel's isolation and throws up questions...
Author
Publisher
Open Letter
Pub. Date
2011
Language
English
Description
"A middle-aged lexicographer, Helena Verbloem, travels alone to Durban to assist in the creation of a dictionary of Afrikaans words that have fallen out of use. Shortly after her arrival, her apartment is burglarized, and her collection of precious shells, shells that she had been collecting for a lifetime, is stolen. Meeting with indifference from the local police, she decides to investigate the crime on her own, with the help of her new friend from...
20) Ball of fire
Publisher
Warner Home Video
Pub. Date
[2007]
Language
English
Description
Realizing they have to hear how real people talk, a group of lexicographers end up helping a beautiful singer get away from the mob.