Inside the “Oxford English Dictionary”

Caught in the Web of Words’ tells of the convergence of two streams: the plans of the Philological Society of London for a new dictionary of the English language, and the life of Sir James A. H. Murray (1837-1915), a Scots Borderer and village schoolmaster, who became its principal editor. The result was the Oxford English Dictionary, a work far beyond what the society or Murray himself had envisaged; Mencken aptly called it “the emperor of dictionaries” (Chicago Tribune [March 7, 1926]). This account by one of Murray’s granddaughters naturally emphasizes his role, but it is not a simple work of family piety. Drawing on both family papers and the archives of the OED, it is a sensitive, perceptive appraisal, showing the complicated interrelationships of institutions and personalities. As such it is a work any scholar can appreciate, though only those who have undertaken analogous projects can grasp its full implications. To praise Murray’s accomplishment is not to disparage his predecessors in lexicography. But to a twentieth-century reader, Johnson’s Dictionary, for instance, tells more about Johnson than about the language; it is sui generis. The OED not only offers an incomparable record of the language but establishes the primary role of the lexicographer as a recorder of usage rather than an arbiter of linguistic etiquette. Assuming the latter role in his 1747 prospectus, Johnson recognized its futility in his 1755 preface; since then, whatever the stance of publishers or publicists, no respectable lexicographer has done otherwise. As with other major reference works, not a little chance entered into the development of the OED. It was launched at the height of Victorian optimism, which also produced the ninth edition of the Britannica, the DNB, and the county histories. It came at a crucial point in the development of English studies in Britain, when there had been serious thinking and considerable action toward the production of a new kind of dictionary. It reached its dimensions under the sponsorship of the Clarendon Press, after several other publishers-John Murray, Macmillan (in partnership with Harper), and Cambridge-had rejected the society’s scheme for a far smaller work on the same principles. It could probably have been undertaken only when it was. A generation later, the growth of the Englishspeaking peoples, the expansion of literacy, and the multiplication of printed materials would have made a thorough historical dictionary of English too awesome to contemplate. A generation earlier there was not the development of linguistics, the awareness of the defects of existing British dictionaries (the United States had moved ahead in quality with Noah Webster, the Webster-Worcester war of the dictionaries, and Merriam’s drastically revised Webster of 1864),