Professor Charlotte Brewer, Research Leave
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a treasure-house of the English language. It not only records and defines all the words ever used in the English Language, it also illustrates how each word has been used at the various stages of its history. Containing over 600,000 words, and 2,500,000 quotations the OED is the authority on the history of the English language from 1150 to present day.
Whilst the history of the OED, up until the publication of the final instalment of the first edition in 1928, has been well documented, little has been written about it after this period. A new book, funded by the AHRC, has picked up the story of the OED from the point where others have stopped and followed it through to the twenty first century electronic medium.
In The Oxford English Dictionary – Treasure House of the English Language, the author Charlotte Brewer draws on day-to-day memo’s between publishers and lexicographers, preserved in OED archives. These memo’s provide valuable insights in to why the dictionary was compiled, the public’s hopes and expectations of the dictionary in contrast to scholarly expectations, and the agonies and the triumphs behind its creation. The book also looks at the difficulties of keeping the OED up to date over time, the recurring debates over finances, treatment of contentious words and changing editorial practices.
The book focuses primarily on the decision process behind what words should be included in the dictionary, and what sources to draw upon when using quotations to illustrate meanings. Access to original archive material has enabled Charlotte to portray the personalities of the editors, publishers and assistants tasked with keeping a pace with the modern explosion of vocabulary.
The AHRC’s Research Leave grant enabled Charlotte to take 6 months to concentrate on the writing of the book. As Charlotte explains: ‘The AHRC leave was very valuable. It gave me the chance to complete and publish my book, but it also gave me time to open up new avenues of research. Much of the book fed subsequently into my website "Examining the OED", which gets both academic and non-academic visitors, and I also published a number of articles in academic refereed journals, developing different strands of the work – including the importance of Johnson’s dictionary as a model for the OED.’
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