Yesterday I attended my first library discussion group at my local Montgomery County Library. The book on discussion was “The Professor and the Madman“ by Simon Winchester.
I really enjoyed this book, firstly because it was the first book that I had listened to on tape on the car on the way to work, which relieved me of a daily ritual of boredom. The book is about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary and the sinister life of William C. Minor - a professor committed to Broadmoor criminal lunatic asylum for murder, and contributor to the making of the dictionary.
Minor, an American who studied at Yale, was a army surgeon in the civil war, with erotic tendencies and brilliant literacy skills. During his stay in Broadmoor (1871 - 1910), Minor occupied two cells from which he read many books spanning the 17th, 18th and 19th century. Minor submitted thousands of word quotations to James Henry Murray - the editor of the OED, most of the quotes contributed being the earliest known use of the published words.
Minor suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Murray and his colleagues, based out of Oxford, had no idea that one of the main contributors was a man suffering from nightly torment and delusion only 30 miles away in the institution.
Most of the attendees in the book reading discussion liked the book but felt that it became a little dry in the middle when Winchester goes into lengthy description about the origin of some of the dictionary words and quotes. Many of the group readers, myself included, would have liked to hear more about Minor and his life in Broadmoor. Overall the book was well worth reading and it's content reflected the extensive research performed by the author.