Sir James Murray, right, and his editorial team work on the Oxford English Dictionary in the central workroom known as the Scriptorium. From “The Dictionary People,” by Sarah Ogilvie.

Thursday was Wolvercote Cemetery and the resting place of my hero James Murray, the longest-serving Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 up to his death in 1915.

The Dictionary People. By Sarah Ogilvie. Knopf; 384 pages; $30. Chatto & Windus; £20. I n July 1915 an ailing James Murray (pictured), one of the early editors of the Oxford English Dictionary ...

Martin Fone, who has long been fascinated by words, digs in to the story of how Sir James Murray created the first Oxford English Dictionary — despite having a full-time job and 11 children — and ...

An expert in music and mathematics and an authority on English phonology, he had been contacted by the editor James Murray to assist with compiling what would become the Oxford English Dictionary.

When James Murray took command in 1879, the Oxford English Dictionary could best be defined by the word disarray. The irony of making this massive reference book was that it required millions upon ...

The Oxford English Dictionary calls itself “the definitive record of the English language, featuring 600,000 words, 3 million quotations, ... Dr. James Murray, a philologist, ...

James Murray, the Scottish philologist who left school at fourteen and, in 1879, ... the Oxford Dictionary of African American English. No Scriptorium this time, ...

James Murray (1837-1915), the indefatigable editor who oversaw much of the first edition, was originally commissioned to produce a four-volume work within a decade; after five years, he had got as ...

Who was the greatest dictionary-maker ever? Most people, faced with this question, would instantly think of Dr Samuel Johnson. Yet, pioneer though Johnson undoubtedly was, it is Scottish ...

Sarah Ogilvie’s sprightly “The Dictionary People” pays tribute to the explorers, suffragists, murderers and ordinary citizens who helped create the Oxford English Dictionary.