Little was known about the 3,000 mysterious contributors to the first edition of the Oxford dictionary. Then a former editor made a fascinating discovery.
But until recently, after a chance finding by Sarah Ogilvie, a former editor of the OED, many of their identities remained a secret.
James Murray and other editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, who worked in a "scriptorium" reviewing words sent in from all over the world.Volunteers from around the globe then sent in "slips" with examples of how different words were used in magazines, journals, books or newspapers.That was until she found herself in the basement of Oxford University Press, where the dictionary archive is stored, and she stumbled across Murray's old address book.
Ms Bradley and Ms Cooper's contributions to the OED included 500 slips from their friend and poet Robert Browning's Dramatic Idyls, and 750 slips from Homer's Iliad. Although the OED now employs 75 people who work on the dictionary daily, it still relies on crowdsourcing. In 2006, Dr Ogilvie organised to meet with Mr Collier, in what he called his "office": a park behind his local pub.She asked if he would accept a paid flight to Oxford to recognise the extent of his contributions.
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