|
Carregando... L'assassino più colto del mondo (1998)de Simon Winchester
Detalhes da ObraThe Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (P.S.) de Simon Winchester (1998)
  
Unread books (25) » 11 mais Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. An interesting story. By the end of it, I mostly wanted to learn more about the process of how the dictionary itself was written, but the OED more of a tertiary character in this story. (  ) fidgetyfern | Feb 23, 2021 |  The history of the compilation of the "Oxford English Dictionary" with its viewpoint being the contribution of William Minor, an inmate of Broadmoor Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Well edited writing, an interesting story about poor Minor and an effective brief outline of the development of the Dictionary and the attempts to compile one prior to the OED. ivanfranko | Feb 18, 2021 | I think the best way to sum it up is interesting but not exactly a compelling read... ( ) mcsp | Jan 25, 2021 | The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder,Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary - Winchester Audio performance by the author 4 stars Much of this interesting history reads like a novel. It didn’t have the fictionalized melodrama of the movie that I watched recently, but it kept my attention from beginning to end. The audiobook, read by the author, was very well done, but I enjoyed the use of OED definitions more in the text copy. It didn’t surprise me that Dr. Minor became obsessed with compiling referent quotations. I’ve used word puzzles, jigsaw puzzles and other repetitive activities many years ago when I worked as a psych aide. As a teacher similar, if much easier, tasks could sometimes help calm a special needs child. Given the lack of other treatments in the 19th century, it was fortunate that Dr. Minor was allowed to use dictionary tasks to engage his attention. It was useful work, and for a while it helped to contain his delusions. This book was first published in 1998. The audiobook included an author interview with John Simpson, the chief editor of the OED. It wasn’t clear when the interview took place, but I found it interesting. There’s some discussion of a cd rom edition of the dictionary and how the ongoing work was becoming mostly electronic. Interesting, but not nearly as interesting as thousands of little strips of paper submitted by a lunatic. (  ) msjudy | Jan 12, 2021 | A history of making the Oxford English Dictionary. If it sounds boring, that's because it is. Some of the bits regarding William Chester Miner, the "madman" were interesting, but by and large this book was pretty boring. (  ) Andjhostet | Jan 11, 2021 |
Here, as so consistently throughout, Winchester finds exactly the right tool to frame the scene. Pertence à série publicada
The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary began in 1857, took seventy years to complete, drew from tens of thousands of brilliant minds, and organized the sprawling language into 414,825 precise definitions. But hidden within the rituals of its creation is a fascinating and mysterious story - a story of two remarkable men whose strange twenty-year relationship lies at the core of this historic undertaking. Professor James Murray, an astonishingly learned former schoolmaster and bank clerk, was the distinguished editor of the OED project. Dr. William Chester Minor, an American surgeon from New Haven, Connecticut, who had served in the Civil War, was one of thousands of contributors who submitted illustrative quotations of words to be used in the dictionary. But Minor was no ordinary contributor. He was remarkably prolific, sending thousands of neat, handwritten quotations from his home in the small village of Crowthorne, fifty miles from Oxford. On numerous occasions Murray invited Minor to visit Oxford and celebrate his work, but Murray's offer was regularly - and mysteriously - refused. Thus the two men, for two decades, maintained a close relationship only through correspondence. Finally, in 1896, after Minor had sent nearly ten thousand definitions to the dictionary but had still never traveled from his home, a puzzled Murray set out to visit him. It was then that Murray finally learned the truth about Minor - that, in addition to being a masterful wordsmith, Minor was also a murderer, clinically insane - and locked up in Broadmoor, England's harshest asylum for criminal lunatics. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
 Google Books — Carregando...Capas popularesAvaliaçãoMédia: (3.8)
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
4
2