There are some historical novels that transport you to another time so completely that you begin to feel as though you are standing in the room alongside the characters. The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams is one of those books. But rather than taking us into the world of kings, battles or famous political figures, Williams takes us somewhere rather unexpected: into the fascinating world of dictionaries. Welcome to The Dictionary of Lost Words Unit and review, including lots of fun activities at the end!
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At the heart of the novel is the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the most ambitious scholarly projects ever undertaken. Yet this is not simply a novel about how words are defined. It is a story about who gets remembered, whose voices are considered important, and what happens to the experiences of people whose words never make it into the historical record.
For a history homeschool, I think that makes The Dictionary of Lost Words particularly interesting. It opens up conversations about language, women’s history, social class, education, the First World War and the women’s suffrage movement, all through the eyes of a fictional young woman growing up alongside a very real historical project.
Click here for lots of lovely resources perfect for an Edwardian Unit Study!
The Dictionary of Lost Words Unit: A Dictionary Becomes the Centre of a Life
Our protagonist, Esme Nicoll, is fictional, but she grows up surrounded by real history.
As a child, Esme spends much of her time in the Scriptorium, the shed in the garden of Dr James Murray, where the enormous task of compiling the first Oxford English Dictionary is being carried out. Her father works on the dictionary, and Esme becomes fascinated by the little slips of paper on which words and examples of their usage are recorded.
The idea is wonderfully simple: words are collected on slips, sorted, studied and eventually used to construct definitions.
But Esme notices something that the adults around her don’t seem to notice.
Some words disappear.
A slip might fall to the floor. A word might be rejected. A definition might not adequately capture the way someone actually uses it. And, most importantly, the people whose everyday language is being recorded are not all equally represented.
Esme begins collecting these ‘lost words’ herself.
What begins as a child’s fascination gradually becomes something much more significant. As Esme grows older, she starts to understand that language can reveal the inequalities of the society in which it develops.
And that is where Williams’s novel becomes much more than a story about a dictionary. Read on for The Dictionary of Lost Words Unit and review.
The Real History Behind the Novel
One of the best things about The Dictionary of Lost Words is that its historical foundation is genuine.
The project that eventually became the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) began in the 1850s, when members of the Philological Society in London argued that English needed a comprehensive historical dictionary. The ambition was enormous: rather than simply listing words and giving their meanings, the dictionary would trace words through history and demonstrate how their meanings and usage had changed.
Volunteers were asked to find examples of words in books and other printed sources and send those quotations to the editors. These quotations were written onto slips of paper and organised by the dictionary team.
It was an extraordinary undertaking, and an extremely slow one.
The first volume, covering words from A to B, took decades to appear. The complete first edition was eventually finished in the 1920s.
Williams makes this painstaking process part of the atmosphere of the novel. The reader gets a sense of just how laborious creating such a dictionary was: sorting slips, examining quotations, determining meanings and deciding which evidence was important enough to include.
It is easy to forget today, when we can type a word into a search engine and receive its definition almost instantly, that creating a dictionary of this scale required years of human labour.
And that historical reality makes the novel’s central question particularly compelling:
Who decides which words are important enough to preserve?
Click here for my review of another excellent Edwardian Book: The Wind in the Willows!
The Mystery of ‘Bondmaid’
The novel was inspired by a real historical mystery involving the word ‘bondmaid’.
The word refers to a female servant or enslaved woman bound to service. Historical evidence shows that quotations for the word had been collected for the dictionary, yet the word was ultimately omitted from the first edition. The surviving archival evidence does not explain exactly how it disappeared.
Williams took that intriguing gap in the historical record and built her fictional story around it.
In the novel, Esme witnesses a slip containing the word ‘bondmaid’ fall from the table. She secretly rescues it and begins keeping other discarded or overlooked words.
This is a wonderful example of how historical fiction works at its best.
The author starts with something that really happened, or something for which the historical record leaves an unanswered question, and imagines the human story that might exist behind it.
It is important, particularly when reading this as part of a history education, to remember that Esme and her story are fictional. The creation of the OED, James Murray and the surviving evidence concerning ‘bondmaid’ belong to history; Esme’s role in what happened belongs to Williams’ imagination. Williams herself explains that she discovered the surviving slips for ‘bondmaid’ while researching the archives and used that fragment of history as the starting point for her novel.
That distinction actually provides an excellent homeschool discussion.
Where does the historical record end, and where does the novelist begin?
Women Whose Words were Overlooked
The novel’s most powerful theme is the relationship between language and women’s history.
The OED project depended heavily on written evidence. That sounds reasonable until you stop to consider whose words were most likely to survive in print in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.
Educated writers, scholars, poets, novelists and other published authors naturally left behind large quantities of written material.
But what about women who had little access to education?
What about servants?
What about working-class women?
And what about people whose everyday language was spoken rather than written down?
Their experiences could be much harder to find in the documentary record.
This becomes increasingly important to Esme. She begins listening carefully to women around her and recording words and expressions that she feels deserve to be remembered.
The novel therefore asks a surprisingly profound historical question:
Can a Dictionary Ever Be Completely Neutral?
Williams doesn’t suggest that the OED was deliberately trying to erase women. Rather, she draws attention to the limitations of the evidence available to the dictionary’s editors and to the social structures that determined whose words were preserved in the first place.
That is one of the aspects of the novel I found most thought-provoking.
We often imagine history as a collection of facts that simply exist, waiting for us to discover them. But historians work with surviving evidence…and evidence is never evenly distributed.
Some people leave diaries, letters and published books behind.
Others leave almost nothing.
Sometimes the silence in the historical record tells us something important too.
The Dictionary of Lost Words Unit: The Women’s Suffrage Movement
Williams also places Esme’s life against the backdrop of the women’s suffrage movement.
This is another area where the novel can work particularly well for homeschool history.
Click here to read more about our Women’s Suffragettes unit study!
During Esme’s lifetime, women in Britain were increasingly demanding political rights, including the right to vote. The movement contained different organisations and approaches, from constitutional campaigning to the increasingly militant tactics associated with the suffragettes.
The novel allows us to encounter this history not simply as a list of dates and political events but as something experienced by ordinary people.
For Esme, the question of women’s voices becomes inseparable from the question of women’s political power.
If women cannot vote, if their work is undervalued, if their experiences are dismissed and if even their language can disappear from supposedly authoritative records, then what does it mean for women to have a voice?
The book’s answer is not simplistic, but its message is clear: being heard matters.
Click here to read my review of Barbara Mitchelhill’s Secret Suffragette!
The Dictionary of Lost Words Unit: The First World War Changes Everything
The historical backdrop shifts again as Europe moves towards the First World War.
The war brings another dimension to the novel’s exploration of language and loss.
Letters become incredibly important. People at home depend upon written words to maintain connections with loved ones serving far away. At the same time, war changes what people can say, what can be communicated and what can be left unsaid.
The First World War also creates enormous personal and social upheaval for Esme and those around her.
This section of the novel reminded me that history isn’t just about enormous events happening on a national or international scale. A war changes individual lives in countless small ways: a person doesn’t come home, a family loses its income, a young woman takes on new responsibilities, or an ordinary relationship is permanently altered.
The novel’s historical events therefore never feel completely detached from its characters.
History happens to them.
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The Dictionary of Lost Words Unit: A History of Ordinary People
Perhaps my favourite aspect of the book is its attention to people who might otherwise disappear from the historical record.
The famous names connected with the Oxford English Dictionary are fascinating, but Williams repeatedly draws our attention towards the people working around them.
There are women doing domestic work, people from different social classes, volunteers, workers and women whose experiences don’t necessarily fit comfortably into the official historical narrative.
That makes the book particularly valuable for anyone interested in social history.
If you are homeschooling history, this is a wonderful opportunity to move beyond the traditional question of ‘What did the important people do?’ and ask ‘What was everyday life like for people who didn’t make it into the history books?’
That question can lead into all sorts of research:
- What was life like for Victorian servants?
- What education was available to girls?
- How did working-class women live?
- What did the suffrage movement actually involve?
- How did the First World War affect families at home?
- How were books and newspapers produced?
- How did people communicate before modern technology?
- Whose letters and diaries survive from this period?
- Why do some people’s experiences appear more often in historical sources than others?
Suddenly, a novel about a dictionary becomes a doorway into an entire period of history.
Click here for our in-depth Titanic Unit Study!
Esme as a Fictional Historian of Sorts
I also enjoyed watching Esme’s understanding of words develop alongside her understanding of people.
As a child, she simply wants to save words.
As she grows older, she begins to understand why some words are missing.
And eventually she realises that recording language is a way of recording people’s lives.
In that sense, Esme becomes almost like a little historian.
She listens.
Asks questions.
Records
And preserves evidence.
And she worries about what will happen if nobody bothers to remember.
That is a surprisingly good description of what historians do.
Of course, historians have to go further than Esme does. They need to assess sources, consider reliability, compare evidence and recognise that an individual recollection may tell only part of a story.
But Esme’s instinct to pay attention to voices that might otherwise disappear is an important historical instinct.
What I Loved About the Novel
For me, the greatest strength of The Dictionary of Lost Words is its original premise.
There are countless historical novels about war, royalty and political upheaval. Far fewer take something as apparently ordinary as a dictionary and reveal the fascinating history hiding behind it.
Williams also succeeds in making language itself feel alive.
Words aren’t presented as dry entries in a reference book. Instead, Williams connects them to memories, relationships, class, gender, grief, love and identity.
The book also encourages the reader to think about how much meaning a dictionary definition can actually capture.
A definition might tell us what a word means.
But does it tell us what the word feels like?
Does it tell us who uses it?
Does it tell us whether the word is affectionate, insulting, old-fashioned, intimate or cruel?
And can a definition ever fully capture the experiences of the people who use a word?
Those questions stayed with me after I finished reading.
A Few Reservations
The novel isn’t perfect, and I think it is worth saying so.
The story covers a remarkably long period, and the passage of time can sometimes make the narrative feel slightly episodic. Esme’s life moves through decades, and readers who prefer tightly focused historical novels may find the structure a little uneven.
The book is also more interested in ideas and relationships than in fast-paced action. If you’re looking for a historical adventure, this probably isn’t the book for you.
There are also some emotionally difficult subjects within the story, so parents may want to consider the maturity of their particular child before using it as a homeschool read-aloud.
But for older readers who enjoy historical fiction, discussion and questions about how history is constructed, these qualities are much less of a problem.
In fact, the slower pace gives the reader room to think.
The Dictionary of Lost Words Unit: Why I’d Recommend It For a History Homeschool
I think The Dictionary of Lost Words would make an especially rich companion to a study of Britain from the Victorian period through the First World War and into the 1920s.
It could easily become the centre of a mini unit study.
You could read the novel alongside a study of:
The Victorian Era followed by the Edwardian Era
Explore social class, education, servants, industrialisation and everyday life.
The Oxford English Dictionary
Investigate how the compilers actually created the dictionary and compare the historical process with the novel.
Women’s suffrage
Study the different organisations involved in the campaign and the arguments for and against women’s voting rights.
The First World War
Look at how the war affected civilians as well as soldiers.
Primary sources
Find letters, diaries, newspaper articles and photographs from the period and ask what they reveal—and what they leave out.
The history of language
Choose an old or unusual word and investigate its origins, changing meanings and modern usage.
Perhaps most interestingly, you could ask your student to create their own ‘Dictionary of Lost Words’.
Have them interview grandparents or older relatives and record words, expressions or sayings that they remember from childhood but rarely hear today.
Where did those words come from?
Who used them?
What did they mean?
Why have they disappeared?
That activity would beautifully connect the novel’s central idea with the practice of oral history.
Final Thoughts
The Dictionary of Lost Words is a book about much more than words.
It is about memory.
It is about power.
And it is about whose stories survive.
And it is about the uncomfortable truth that history can lose people without us even realising that they were there.
Pip Williams takes the fascinating real history of the Oxford English Dictionary and uses it as the foundation for a fictional story about Esme Nicoll, a woman determined to preserve the language and experiences that she believes are being overlooked.
The result is thoughtful, gentle and at times deeply moving historical fiction.
What I especially appreciated is that the book doesn’t simply tell us that history has forgotten people. It makes us think about why that happens.
A dictionary records words.
An archive records documents.
A history book records events.
But none of these things can ever contain everything.
There will always be words that weren’t written down, stories that weren’t preserved, experiences that weren’t considered important enough to record and people whose names never appeared in the official accounts.
And perhaps that is the most valuable lesson The Dictionary of Lost Words offers a young history student:
When you study history, don’t only look at what has been preserved. Ask what might have been lost.
It is here we find some of the most interesting history.
My verdict: ★★★★★
A beautifully imagined and historically fascinating novel that would make an excellent companion to a homeschool study of Victorian Britain, women’s suffrage, the First World War, social history and the development of the English language.
The Dictionary of Lost Words Unit: Activity Ideas
1. Become an OED Researcher Dictionary Slip Activity
Create a printable sheet that looks like an authentic Victorian dictionary slip.
Students choose a word and record:
- The word
- Its meaning
- Where they found it
- A quotation using the word
- The date of the quotation
- What they think the quotation tells us about the period
- Whether the word’s meaning has changed
You could even have them make five or ten slips and sort them alphabetically, just as the real OED team did.
This would be especially fun because the original OED archive contains more than five million slips for the first edition.
2. The Mystery of Bondmaid Historical Investigation
This could be one of your strongest printables.
Give students a small collection of historical clues and ask them to investigate:
What happened to the word bondmaid?
Questions could include:
- What does bondmaid mean?
- When was the word used?
- Why might the word be historically significant?
- What evidence survives?
- What do we know for certain?
- What is fictionalised in Pip Williams’s novel?
- Why might Williams have chosen this particular word?
- Can we ever know exactly why a word disappeared from the historical record?
It would be a fantastic introduction to the difference between evidence and interpretation.
The novel itself uses the unexplained fate of the word as part of its fictional story.
3. The Dictionary of Lost Words: Historical Timeline
A beautiful illustrated timeline could run from:
1857 → 1860s → 1879 → 1884 → 1900s → First World War → 1918 → 1928
Students could add both novel events and real historical events.
You could have two colours:
🟣 REAL HISTORY
🟡 FICTION FROM THE NOVEL
That would teach an important history skill: recognising that historical fiction isn’t the same thing as a primary source.
The OED was conceived in 1857, Murray became editor in 1879, the first instalment appeared in 1884, and the first edition was completed in 1928.
4. Write Like an OED Volunteer
This could be a lovely creative-history activity.
The real OED relied upon volunteer readers, who searched books and other publications for examples of words and sent their findings to the editors. Murray actively recruited volunteers through his famous appeals.
Give students an imaginary word and ask them to write a ‘quotation slip’ for it.
Then ask:
Dear Dr Murray,
I have found an interesting use of the word…
They could explain where they found it and why they think it belongs in the dictionary.
5. Women’s Voices in History
This could connect the book to the suffrage movement.
A printable could ask:
Whose voices survive in history?
Students investigate a woman from the period and complete:
- Who was she?
- What was her occupation?
- What education did she receive?
- What did she believe?
- What did she write or say?
- What evidence of her life survives?
- What might we not know about her?
- Why?
You could include women from very different backgrounds rather than concentrating only on famous suffragettes.
That would fit beautifully with the novel’s concern with women’s experiences being overlooked.
6. Words Tell Us About Society
Give students a selection of historical words and ask them to investigate what each reveals about the society in which it was used.
For example:
servant • suffrage • governess • ration • telegram • factory • suffragette • trench • wireless • gentleman
For each word:
What does this word mean?
When did it become important?
Who would have used it?
What does it reveal about everyday life?
This turns vocabulary into social history.
7. Become a Victorian Newspaper Detective
Give students a reproduction-style newspaper page containing short historical extracts.
Ask them to hunt for:
- unfamiliar words
- expressions that have changed meaning
- references to women’s lives
- evidence of social class
- political opinions
- references to technology
- clues about everyday life
Then ask:
What does this newspaper tell us about the people who read it?
You could finish with:
What does this source NOT tell us?
That last question is an excellent introduction to historical source criticism.
8. Fact, Fiction or Both?
This would be very useful alongside the novel.
Create cards containing statements such as:
- James Murray was a real person.
- Esme Nicoll was a real OED researcher.
- The OED used quotation slips.
- Women worked on the OED project.
- The First World War really happened.
- Esme’s personal experiences are historical evidence.
Students sort them into:
FACT | FICTION | INSPIRED BY HISTORY
The Oxford English Dictionary really did employ women in its early editorial work; for example, they hired two women in 1879 to help sort quotation slips.
9. Primary Source Detective
Give students an old photograph, letter, newspaper clipping or diary entry connected to the period.
Then provide a magnifying-glass worksheet:
SOURCE DETECTIVE
I can see…
And I can read…
I think this tells me…
And I wonder…
The source might be biased because…
I would like to know…
What the source cannot tell me…
This would make an excellent general history-skills printable rather than simply a book worksheet.
10. Write a First World War Letter
Students imagine they are one of the characters—or an ordinary young person living through the period.
They write a letter that includes:
- where they are
- what they can see
- what they have been doing
- what they miss
- something they are worried about
- something they hope for
Then add a second page:
Historical Detective: Which parts of your letter are historically accurate?
This makes the creative writing exercise a piece of historical research too.
11. Create Your Own ‘Dictionary of Lost Words’
I’d definitely include this as a larger final project.
Ask students to find 10 words that are disappearing from everyday use.
They could interview parents, grandparents or other relatives and record:
WORD:
MEANING:
WHO USED IT:
WHERE IT CAME FROM:
WHEN I FIRST HEARD IT:
EXAMPLE:
WHY I THINK IT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED:
Then bind the pages together into a little homemade dictionary.
This mirrors the central idea of Esme’s project while also becoming a piece of family oral history.
12. Build a ‘History of a Word’
Choose one word from the novel and trace it through time.
Students research:
Earliest known use → Victorian meaning → Edwardian meaning → modern meaning
Then ask:
Has the meaning changed?
Has the feeling associated with the word changed?
Who uses the word today?
Why do words change?
This would make a lovely combination of English + history + research skills.
13. Making the Oxford English Dictionary?
This could be an illustrated sequencing worksheet.
Students cut out and arrange cards showing the process:
READ A BOOK → FIND A WORD → COPY THE QUOTATION → SEND THE SLIP → SORT THE SLIPS → STUDY THE EVIDENCE → WRITE THE DEFINITION → PRINT THE ENTRY
Then ask:
Why do you think this process took so long?
The historical process really was remarkably collaborative: volunteers supplied quotations, assistants sorted them, and editors used the evidence to construct entries.
14. Where Did the OED’s Words Come From?
This could be a geography/history crossover.
Students research where some of the OED’s contributors lived.
The project drew on readers from Britain and around the world, communicating by post with Murray and sending in quotation slips.
You could give them a blank world map and have them mark:
Oxford → Europe → North America → Australia → other locations
Then ask:
Why would a dictionary of English need evidence from around the world?
15. The Big Question Sheet
Finally, I’d make one deliberately more thoughtful page for older homeschoolers.
At the top:
If a word disappears, does the history behind it disappear too?
Then perhaps six big questions:
- Who gets to decide what is worth remembering?
- Can a dictionary ever be completely neutral?
- What can words tell historians that photographs cannot?
- What kinds of people are most likely to disappear from historical records?
- Is forgetting always accidental?
- What words from our own time might future generations struggle to understand?
That could lead to a really interesting family discussion or short essay.
The Dictionary of Lost Words Worksheets (Click on the image below)
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