Online culture has boomed, screen time has soared and the ‘roaming range’ within which children can play and stray unsupervised has shrunk by more than 90% in 40 years amid parental fears about traffic, ‘stranger danger’ and the pressure of school work.” The rule of dictionary is if a word is commonly spoken, but not commonly written, then it will not be included. Esme argues this rule. The fictional part of this story concerns, Esme, whose father is widowed at Esme's birth. Esme's father is a member of Murphy's team and he brings Esme to work with him each day. As a youngster, Esme spends time under the big table of the workers and often gathers discarded word slips and hides them away in a chest in the room of house servant Lizzie. Lizzie, although just eight years older than Esme, is a combination of mother, companion, and maid to Esme, especially once Esme is banished from the Scriptorium for interfering with the work there.

I loved Esme from the tine she enjoyed climbing under the table at the Scriptorium. Feet and legs beneath a table can tell you so much about the person attached but unseen. At about the same age as Esme, I could be found crawling under the table at large family gatherings. Aunt Teresa's feet and legs could belong to no other relative, neatly crossed at the ankle above the very still feet in orthopedic shoes. But which relative kept crossing and uncrossing their legs, tapping out some unheard tune? Was the adult conversation disturbing or did they need to use the bathroom? This underworld entertainment would continue for me, and for Esme, until my absence was noticed and I was forced to join those in the above world. Of course, we both received an admonition for unladylike behavior.The book also covers the lot of the poor, women and suffragettes, as well as what it may have been like to grow up motherless in Victorian England; it's nowhere near as stuffy as it might sound to some and proved to be a really immersive experience. One of those books, that might not be the greatest but I whole heartedly feel every booknerd MUST read! 8 out of 12. As the years progress, work on the dictionary continues and Esme grows up to be a young lady whose love for words and her growing collection of discarded slips of paper develops into a practice of searching for words that are significant not just to her but to the people, especially women, around her.

The opening third of the novel is I have to say rather simplistically written, as well as slowly paced and maybe rather repetitive (slips put on tables seem to live up to their verbal usage a little too often). In both aspects though I realised that this fits Esme’s life at that stage: she is, of course, an immature young first party narrator; and her word-collection projection is rather ill founded and directionless at this time - perhaps as much as anything a reaction to the loss of her mother. Sadly, her collection of words goes no where (other than that trunk) without the help of a man in her life later in the book. And the single copy publication of this dictionary of hers is given as a gift of sorts from him. Mainly what this book made me wish for was a more detailed account on the woman, Edith Thompson, with whom Williams took liberties and included as a self-appointed aunt for Esme. Plus, it makes me want to read the book on the publication of the OED by Simon Winchester. The basic outline is sound — and I liked the way it made me want to delve farther into my own side stories on this subject and the publication of dictionaries, this one just didn't deliver it for me on its own.

The book is a fictional story revolving around the creation of the first Oxford dictionary. Esme is a young girl who likes to spend her childhood sitting beneath the sorting table in a garden shed they name the ’Scriptorium’. This is where her lexicographer father and other workers debate which words are to be included in the dictionary. Here Esme sits unseen and unheard, she is motherless and is raised by her father.