With meticulous and painstaking research Simon Winchester unpacks this story, detailing the circumstances of Dr. Murray even played a role in trying to get Minor released from his detention, but Minor’s constant paranoid behavior undercut such appeals until he was very elderly, weak and sick. He visited him in the asylum and they became close, if not friends, in those more formal times, at least close co-workers.
Minor began his contributions in 1880 and it wasn’t until 1889 that James Murray learned of Minor’s situation. Minor responded and over the next 30 years contributed more than 10,000 individual bits of valuable data, one of the most prolific and useful contributors of the unpaid volunteer workers. When Murray put out his call for volunteer labor on the OED, Dr. However, a man of significant means, appearing at least, not to be harmful and an American in England, Minor was allowed many privileges such as keeping another inmate as servant, having two cells to himself, allowed stores of fine wines and foods, and most importantly to this story, being allowed to accumulate a huge library of rare books. Author Simon Winchester suggests that the evidence points to Minor’s experiences in the war, being forced to brand Irish deserters from the Union army, as causative of his mental state and the murder. army officer, a physician with Union forces in the Civil War. Minor who was incarcerated in a mental hospital for the incurably insane, having murdered a man in London in 1872, the result of his dangerous paranoia. One of the most prolific and long-time contributors was Dr. It was his plan of inviting the scholarly world and interested members of the public to submit slips of paper with relevant data to the editorial staff, documenting early and unusual uses of words which made the OED possible. James Murray is an important early editor of the OED, and the man who brought out several of the early volumes, which were first published letter by letter in order. This is the true story of two men, their relationship to one another, and the relationship of both to the Oxford English dictionary. Winchester, Simon: THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN - oed oXFORD English Dictionary THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN: A TALE OF MURDER, INSANITY, AND THE MAKING OF THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY
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