This book tells the history of the Oxford English Dictionary from its beginnings in the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. Drawing extensively on archival and other sources, it traces the conception of the idea of the Dictionary in the 1850s right up to the launching of the Dictionary as an online database in 2000 and beyond.

This book tells the history of the Oxford English Dictionary from its beginnings in the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. The author, uniquely among historians of the OED, is also a practising lexicographer with nearly thirty years' experience of working on the Dictionary. He has drawn on a wide range of sources--including previously unexamined archival material and eyewitness testimony--to create a detailed history of the project. The book explores the cultural background from which the idea of a comprehensive historical dictionary of English emerged, the lengthy struggles to...