By the way, regardless of its present title it is an excellent book deserving of the 5 stars I have given it. And my buying it by honest mistake put me at no great loss. The price was most reasonable. (I might even take this opportunity to re-read it). The book was a major success.[3][4][5] Winchester went on to write The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (2003) about the broader history of the OED". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Surg... Insinuates that Doctor Brayn - Minor's psychologist after a much more lenient doctor - only revoked Minor's many privileges because he was jealous of Minor's fame with helping find quotes for the OED. I'm sorry - DOCTOR MINOR HAD JUST CUT OFF HIS OWN PENIS. DOCTOR BRAYN WAS NOT JEALOUS. HE WAS TRYING TO KEEP A SELF-HARMING SCHIZOPHRENIC FROM DOING MORE HARM TO HIMSELF. HE WAS DOING HIS JOB. Winchester goes further, though. He had already demonstrated how Minor was in serious decline by this point (I mean did I mention he cut off his own penis????), and then Doctor Brayn took away all his privileges. Winchester, who apparently has no concept of cause and effect, says that Minor's good health began to decline after the evil Brayn jealously did what he did. NO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Declining health -> cutting off penis -> revoking of privileges =/= cutting off penis -> jealousy on the part of the attending physician -> tragic decline of patient. That's some shady-ass logic right there. As a completely fledged bibliopsychotic and an ever-striving-to-be cunning-linguist , I was all aquiver with anticipation to bury my face in this purported history of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Alas, despite being well-written and thoroughly researched, I’m having to fake it a bit to give this a full 3 stars. French director Luc Besson handed Mel Gibson the project, saying, "It isn't my first language. Maybe you can do something with this". [3] Gibson, who originally intended to direct, hired his Apocalypto co-screenwriter Farhad Safinia to replace him, while he remained in the role of James Murray. Sean Penn entered early talks to join the film as William Chester Minor in August 2016. [4] In August, Natalie Dormer signed on for a role. [5] In September, Ioan Gruffudd joined the cast. [6]

The book’s original title, The Surgeon of Crowthorne,refers to Minor, as the asylum was near the village of Crowthorne in Berkshire, England. One would assume that in a book about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, every single word would be chosen with deliberate care. So why does Winchester refer to the murdered man George Merret's family as "the widow and her brood"???? If Winchester had bothered to look up the OED definition of "brood" he would have known it refers to animals exclusively and is insulting to call a human family a brood. Shame upon shame. Minor was born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the son of Eastman Strong Minor and his first wife, Lucy Bailey. His parents were Congregational church missionaries from New England. He had numerous half-siblings, among them Thomas T. Minor, mayor of Seattle, Washington. [2] At age 14, he was sent to the United States, where he lived with relatives in New Haven while attending Russell Military Academy. He subsequently enrolled at the Yale School of Medicine, supporting himself during his years as a medical student with part-time employment as an instructor at the Russell Academy and as an assistant on the 1864 revision of Webster's Dictionary, [3] then in preparation at Yale under the supervision of Noah Porter. Minor graduated in 1863 with a medical degree and a specialization in comparative anatomy. After a brief stint at Knight General Hospital in New Haven he joined the Union Army. Winchester, Simon (1998), The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (1sted.), New York: HarperCollin/Publishers, ISBN 978-0-06-017596-2, OCLC 38425992 ). The Professor and the Madman" redirects here. For the film, see The Professor and the Madman (film).PERSONAL NOTE: I remember this book well because the surgeon who is the main character had been a Union Army surgeon at (I think) the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness; a place just a little way west out the road from where I now write this review. I have been a student of the 1861-65 War of Northern Aggression for scores of years. Barnes, Julie-Anne (18 December 2016). "Mel Gibson plays a Scot in new film but won't face ridicule for accent this time". Daily Record. Archived from the original on 16 January 2017 . Retrieved 27 February 2017. People tend to juxtapose the idea of reading the dictionary with other activities as a means of underscoring how incredibly uninteresting and undesirable those other activities are. For example: “I have to interact with Sean today…UGH. I’d much rather read the dictionary.” They say there are no atheists in fox holes – but I have found that the occurrence of the words ‘penis’, ‘penknife’ and ‘self-inflicted wound’ in a single sentence also has me turning to God and even calling out his son’s name in full.

Winchester, Simon (2001). Le Fou et le Professeur (in French). Librairie générale française. ISBN 978-2-253-15082-4. Dr Johnson made huge strides in lexicography, but the delight of his dictionary is its personal quirkiness, rather than scientific rigour and objectivity. A well-known example: “Oats: a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”There is no index (unforgivable in a book of non-fiction) or bibliography (though there is “further reading”). Until Samuel Johnson, an English writer and lexicographer, compiled A Dictionary of the English Language the English speaking people had few concise or friendly dictionaries to refer to for definitions and/or spellings. Johnson’s volume took nine years to complete and was published in 1755 with a total of 42,773 words defined and it weighed about 22 pounds. Johnson’s was the ‘go to’ dictionary until 150 years later when The Oxford English Dictionary (hereinafter referred to as OE) was published in 1928. Lavorava sodo, immerso nei pensieri e con rapita concentrazione: fece indici e raccolte e collazioni di parole e frasi da ognuno dei suoi libri, finché la scrivania della prigione non fu ingombra dei suoi quaderni, ciascuno contenente un elenco alfabetico generale di parole tratte da tutta la sua eclettica biblioteca, una piccola gemma preziosissima e molto apprezzata”. Lodderhose, Diana (30 September 2016). "Ioan Gruffudd Joins Mel Gibson & Sean Penn For 'The Professor And The Madman' ". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on 13 January 2017 . Retrieved 27 February 2017.

In 1969, Winchester joined The Guardian, first as regional correspondent based in Newcastle upon Tyne, but was later assigned to be the Northern Ireland Correspondent. Winchester's time in Northern Ireland placed him around several events of The Troubles, including the events of Bloody Sunday and the Belfast Hour of Terror. However, it wasn't perfect. Winchester performed some weird narrative experiments. For example, he started off with a really exciting scene, then er... repeated that scene word by word in the middle of the book. And then... a chapter or so later, he said it actually never happened. This is a non fiction book!! The story of William Chester Minor was the fascinating part of this book. The poor man suffered from some combination of PTSD and schizophrenia, no one knows what exactly he was plagued with, but he had predatory delusions and also took to talking to people who weren't there. And then some (no spoilers)! And because of his illness, he murdered a man in cold blood and was put in an asylum for the rest of his life. But aside from that, he was a brilliant man who thrived on helping James Murray and others compile words for England's first dictionary. His symptoms abated when he was able to focus on reading, marking down words, definitions, and sample quotes and then sending them to London. Murray, Katharine Maud Elisabeth (2001). Caught in the Web of Words: James A.H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary. Yale University Press. p.306. In 1899 alone, Minor provided 12,000 quotations for the OEDNot enough primary sources. There are some good quotes about Minor's condition but Winchester does not cite dates or say where the quotes came from. I would have thought a historian would know better?? Also Winchester goes to all the trouble to describe photos but does not include printed copies of the photos. Why???

A relationship… that would combine sublime scholarship, fierce tragedy, Victorian reserve, deep gratitude, mutual respect, and a slowly growing amity that could even… be termed friendship.” Shot in Dublin in 2016, the film became part of a legal battle between Gibson and Safinia against Voltage Pictures, delaying its release until 2019 and resulting in the pair disowning the final product. Compiling the OED took much, much longer than had initially been anticipated, and twenty-two years had already passed from the initial conception to Murray commencing work, and it was a further five years before the first volume (out of twelve) was published, featuring A through to Ant. It took another forty years for the work to be completed. Weissberg, Jay (11 April 2019). "Film Review: Mel Gibson in 'The Professor and the Madman' ". Variety. Archived from the original on 29 April 2019 . Retrieved 6 May 2019. I had no idea about any of this! I don't think I've ever even used or seen an Oxford English Dictionary, being an American. I only remember Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, when people still owned hard copies of dictionaries. lol. Webster's Dictionary, then called the American Dictionary of the English Language, was published in 1828 and the Oxford English Dictionary's final volume, W, was published in 1928. Interesting!

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A journalist with three decades of experience, and the author of a dozen travel-inspired books, Winchester's initial proposal to write a book about an obscure lexicographer met with rejection. Only when Harper Collins editor Larry Ashmead read the proposal and championed the book did Winchester pursue the necessary research in earnest.[1] Of the project Ashmead said "we can make lexicography cool".[2] It was Ashmead that persuaded Winchester to call the US edition The Professor and the Madman (over Winchester's objection that Murray was not a professor), saying "No one here knows what the hell a Crowthorne is."[2] The OED did not reach completion until 1928. Neither Murray nor Minor lived long enough to see the job done, but without their Herculean efforts the whole idea may have been relegated to another generation or maybe never completed at all. Also, Simon Winchester is obviously psychic because he can tell exactly what everyone was thinking and feeling ages ago. The conviction which he states it all with is imperturbable. Though the idea of creating a complete dictionary of the English language was proposed in 1857. It was not until 1884 that parts of it were ready for publication. It floundered for decades under the weight of its own expectations. It wasn’t until the 1870s, when James Murray was asked to helm the project, that the possibility of achieving such a feat became a real possibility. Top - Mel Gibson as James Murray - Bottom - Sean Penn as William Chester Minor - Image from Catchplay - The boys sure did like those long beards