The Professor and the Madman
Winchester's historic account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, which contains 12 volumes and took 70 years to finish, also tells of two men who contributed so much to it: the editor, Dr. James Murray, and the man who spent 48 years locked in an asylums for the insane, Dr. William C. Minor.
Dr. Minor had been a captain in the Union Army in the Civil War. During his years of duty he became a highly respected surgeon, but he finally left the service as a victim of what today we call schizophrenia. He had been assigned to brand a soldier for trying to desert, and it was said, "It drove him [Dr. Minor] mad."
But he was not classified insane until he later murdered an innocent man in England, who he imagined was going to attack him. And that fear of being attacked at night stayed with him the rest of his life. In his asylum cell he always put water at his door, "because the evil spirits will not dare to cross water to get to me."
But during those years of imprisonment, he became engrossed in helping Prof. James Murray and his assistants research English words and their meanings for what was later to become the Oxford English Dictionary. Ironically, it was the wife of the man Minor murdered who later supplied many of the obscure books he studied. She also may have excited him into the self-abuse that plagued him in his later years at the asylum.
Dr. James Murray, who in his work spent five years processing just words beginning with the letter T, was thankful for the information Minor sent him, but didn't learn the man was insane until 20 years after their daily correspondence began. When Dr. Murray finally visited Minor at the asylum, he was surprised that this man who had such frightening illusions at night could be a genius at analyzing word meanings during the day.
In 1910, James Murray, with help from Winston Churchill (not too well-known at that time) made it possible for William Minor to return to a hospital in Washington D.C. James Murray died in 1915 and William Minor in 1920, both before the Oxford English Dictionarywas finished in 1927.
Simon Winchester writes a compelling story about the unique circumstances that bring these two men together. His research on their lives and their contributions to the making of a dictionary is masterful. But as in so many books today, Winchester's best writing is confined to the first few chapters.
The Professor And The Madman was published in 1998 and soon became a national bestseller.