I find myself lost for words to describe this beautiful book filled to the brim with incredible storytelling, compelling themes and symbolism, and, above all, a real sense of purpose and characterisation for our main character. Pip Williams’s The Dictionary of Lost Words is a masterful piece of work and I will put every persuasive word and thought into this review to convince you to pick it up if you haven’t already. It truely is a book like no other.

The book’s blurb is this. 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 realises 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. It’s a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape the world and our experience of it.

The novel is split into parts and these parts weave together so expertly yet hold their own so well, providing punchy segments of their own merit that support the overall message and plot trajectory perfectly. As this is a novel based on the development of the Oxford English Dictionary, an endeavour undertaken by men and therefore lacking significant words and terms pertaining to women, the parts have their own word to mark the changing of the story’s focus. Nothing is out of place nor is it reaching for meaning. Instead, we are left with a novel of depth and true importance, its layers of meanings laced between the pages and the symbolism – the shed, the book, the words that go unmentioned. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a powerhouse of storytelling well worth diving into.

The tension and the pacing fall hand in hand, following Esme through her childhood and into her womanhood as her father works with the OED team in the little shed. Set in the late 19th century and into the early 20th century, a time in which suffragettes were fighting for equal rights and respect in the world, the setting is charged with sexism. As a girl, Esme is allowed to sit under the table by her father’s feet and read the words and listen, which is how she comes across the first forgotten word. As she grows, she learns how things are to happen, why words get discarded and why they’re allowed to be, and where her place in society is. She learns what is acceptable for a young lady and what isn’t all the while undergoing her own momentous task – making a book of forgotten words that will most definitely put herself and her loved ones in danger. I’m underselling it unfortunately because, as you have already noted, I cannot find the words to show how brilliant this book is. There is a reason it has so many awards. There is a reason why I am speechless.

I could try and detail more reasons why you should read The Dictionary of Lost Words but truthfully the more I type the more I want to include spoilers and very important plot points. Just know it is well worth your time – well worth it. The Dictionary of Lost Words is the only book I bought myself in 2023 and I bought it without a second thought because I knew it would be a book I would read and reread every year, if not sooner. It is rich and emotive and highlights an era in time, in women’s history, that deserves to be given more light.