A Gresham College lecture by Professor Sarah Ogilvie, author of The Dictionary People
The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary was one of the world's first crowd-sourced projects in the nineteenth century.
People from all around the world sent in their local words, but no city played a more important role than London. In this lecture, Professor Sarah Ogilvie, author of The Dictionary People: the unsung heroes of the Oxford English Dictionary, tells the fascinating stories of some of the hundreds of Londoners who helped create the world's largest English dictionary. All social classes contributed to the Dictionary from all parts of this great city 150 ago.
From a pornographer living in Bloomsbury who sent in sex words, to a servant in Eaton Square, a suffragist in St John's Wood, a plant expert at Kew Gardens, a coin specialist at the Royal Mint, and a Gresham Professor of Geometry, this is a people's history of one of our most famous books.