A good read about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary and how a dictionary is actually made and how one of the main contributors at the time was locked up in an asylum after killing someone. Interesting in how the mostly volunteers searched early books for when words first used & how they were used in complying the dictionary. The madman was an educated doctor and served as a doctor in the US Civil War and how he started slipping after that. Eventually with his military pension he was to travel Europe and when got to England had a night where he lost it & shot & killed someone basically at random. Was found insane and locked away in basically a home & because has some money was sort of comfortable but still locked away. He was a reader and had many of his own books and saw where they were looking for volunteers on the making of the dictionary & he started this work, submitting many thousands of entries. An interesting read.
There are a couple copies already in PBS and my copy has some underlining & writing in it so I will just donate it away somewhere instead.
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