It took me a while to find the women, and when I did, they were cast in minor and supporting roles. There was Ada Murray, who raised eleven children and ran a household at the same time as supporting her husband in his role as Editor. There was Edith Thompson and her sister Elizabeth Thompson, who between them provided 15,000 quotations for A and B alone, and continued to provide quotations and editorial assistance until the last word was published. There were Hilda, Elsie and Rosfrith Murray, who all worked in the Scriptorium to support their father. And there was Eleanor Bradley, who worked at the Old Ashmolean as part of her father’s team of assistants. There were also countless women who sent in quotations for words. Finally, there were women who wrote novels and biographies and poetry that were considered as evidence for the use of one word or another. But in all cases, they were outnumbered by their male counterparts, and history struggles to recall them at all.

I decided that the absence of women did matter. A lack of representation might mean that the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was biased in favour of the experiences and sensibilities of men. Older, white, Victorian-era men at that.

This novel is my attempt to understand how the way we define language might define us. Throughout, I have tried to conjure images and express emotions that bring our understanding of words into question. By putting Esme among the words, I was able to imagine the effect they might have had on her, and the effect she might have had on them.

From the beginning, it was important that I weave Esme’s fictional story through the history of the Oxford English Dictionary as we know it. I soon realised that this history also included the women’s suffrage movement in England as well as World War I. In all three cases the timelines of events and the broad details have been preserved. Any errors are unintentional.