| Playing Time |
071910 |
| System Details |
Requires OverDrive Media Console (file size: 105197 KB). |
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Mode of access: World Wide Web. |
| Note |
Downloadable audio file. |
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Title from: Title details screen. |
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Unabridged. |
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Duration: 07:19:10. |
| Performer |
Read by the author. |
| Summary |
Writing with marvelous brio, Simon Winchester first serves up a lightning history of the English language and pays homage to the great dictionary makers from Samuel Johnson to Noah Webster before turning his unmatched talent for storytelling to the making of the most venerable of dictionaries, The Oxford English dictionary. Here the listener is presented with lively portraits of such key figures as the brilliant but sickly first editor Herbert Coleridge, the colorful, wildly eccentric Frederick Furnivall, and the incomparable James Augustus Henry Murray, who spent half a century as editor bringing the project to fruition. Winchester lovingly describes the minutiae of dictionary making, brings us to visit the unseemly corrugated iron shed that Murray grandly dubbed The Scriptorium, and introduces some of the legion of volunteers. |
| Note |
GMD: electronic resource. |
| Subject |
Oxford English dictionary.
|
|
English language -- Lexicography -- History -- 19th century.
|
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Murray, James A. H. (James Augustus Henry), 1837-1915.
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Lexicographers -- Great Britain -- Biography.
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Furnivall, Frederick James, 1825-1910.
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Coleridge, Herbert, 1830-1861.
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| Genre/Form |
Audiobooks.
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