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From Goodreads:
In 1901, the word “bondmaid” was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the “Scriptorium,” a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word “bondmaid” flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.
Over time, Esme realizes that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, secretly, she begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.
Set when the women’s suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men.
Rapid Rating: High.
Profanity includes 25 uses of strong language, about 10 instances of moderate profanity, a few uses of mild language, and about 5 instances of the name of Deity in vain. There are frank discussions about sex and names for sexual body parts, including vulgar ones. A woman has sex but there are very few details. A pregnancy ensues and an abortionist is visited but not used. Some mild violence in connection to suffrage rallies. References to deaths in war.
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