The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Oxford English Dictionary

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James Murray in the scriptorium built to house all the slips of paper coming in from his readers to compile the OED. End of story? Not by half, for Minor has a U.S. army pension & uses his funds to establish himself in prison with a double cell, with one used as his personal library & a place to paint, this due to a particularly benevolent warden. Dr. Minor conducts himself very efficiently & productively as a scholar-in-residence but conducting his studies at an asylum rather than a university. The Professor and the Madman digital". Blu-ray.com. 10 May 2019. Archived from the original on 31 January 2020 . Retrieved 31 January 2020.

There’s a story behind everything, and in this case, it’s about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s categorized as a biography but has been described by readers as a detective mystery. A “riveting” one at that. The true story of professor James Murray The film is about professor James Murray, who in 1879 became director of an Oxford University Press project, The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (now known as the Oxford English Dictionary) and the man who became his friend and colleague, W. C. Minor, a doctor who submitted more than 10,000 entries while he was confined at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Crowthorne after being found not guilty of murder due to insanity. Theatrical release in markets outside the U.S. began in March and April 2019. In January 2019, Vertical Entertainment acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film. [14] The U.S. release date was May 10, 2019, with simultaneous limited theatrical release and video on demand. [15] Home media [ edit ] Winchester's first book, In Holy Terror, was published by Faber and Faber in 1975. The book drew heavily on his first-hand experiences during the turmoils in Ulster. In 1976, Winchester published his second book, American Heartbeat, which dealt with his personal travels through the American heartland. Winchester's third book, Prison Diary, was a recounting of his imprisonment at Tierra del Fuego during the Falklands War and, as noted by Dr Jules Smith, is responsible for his rise to prominence in the United Kingdom. Throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, Winchester produced several travel books, most of which dealt with Asian and Pacific locations including Korea, Hong Kong, and the Yangtze River.In July 2017, Gibson and his production company Icon Productions sued the production company Voltage Pictures over their desire to control certain aspects of the production. Among other things, it was alleged that Voltage Pictures refused to schedule a "critical” five days of filming in Oxford and that the director was denied final cut privileges. [9] [10] William Chester Minor (also known as W. C. Minor; 22 June 1834 – 26 March 1920) was an American army surgeon, psychiatric-hospital patient, and lexicographical researcher.

Meanwhile, the first edition of Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage was published in 1926. Several times, Winchester refers to “Doctor Murray”, even though the nearest he got to such a title was an honorary doctorate, the year before he died, aged 78. Sloppy.The bold and unique aim of the OED was to include every single word, however trivial, alphabetically, with etymology, patterns of use, and examples of each meaning from published sources. The OED still shows the meaning and the history of meaning. Words are never removed; merely marked as archaic or obsolete. The undertaking of the scheme, he said, was beyond the ability of any one man. To peruse all of English literature – and to comb the London and New York newspapers, and the most literate of the magazines and journals – must be instead ‘the combined action of many’. It would be necessary to recruit a team – moreover, a huge team, one probably comprising hundreds and hundreds of unpaid amateurs, all of them working as volunteers.

If you've never seen the OED, it's an incredible work. In addition to defining a word, each entry traces its usage in history, giving specific examples of its etymology. My library has the full 20-volume set, and sometimes for fun I'll go look up a word just to see its origin. Most of the biographical portion is devoted to Dr. Minor who, admittedly, was a fascinating character with a colorful history. The author traces the madman’s early career as an Army surgeon during the Civil War, an experience that appears to have been the genesis of his growing dementia. We are given insight into Minor’s abby normal sexual appetites and his irrational, all-consuming fear of Irishmen. This potent combination leads eventually to “the crime” that earned him a permanent residency at Broadmoor Hospital (aka lunatic asylum).D'Alessandro, Anthony (14 January 2019). "Mel Gibson's 'The Professor And The Madman' To Get Theatrical Release Via Vertical After Legal Fight". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on 20 January 2019 . Retrieved 19 January 2019. People tend to juxtapose the idea of reading the dictionary with other activities as a means of underscoring how incredibly uninteresting and undesirable those other activities are. For example: “I have to interact with Sean today…UGH. I’d much rather read the dictionary.” Regrettably Minor's illness got worse as he aged. He became far less sociable, and contributed much less to the dictionary too. The situation at Broadmoor became more difficult as well, when a new person took over the role of governor, who was much more rule-bound, and less sympathetic towards Minor. He made him get rid of his room full of books. As he grew older Minor - who had always defined himself agnostic - became religious, declaring himself to be a deist. Perhaps in the light of his growing religious ideas, his nightly fantasies began causing him even more distress. This culminated in him castrating himself , about 30 years after entering Broadmoor. He survived, but this crisis aside, his general quality of life had gone downhill too.

As a completely fledged bibliopsychotic and an ever-striving-to-be cunning-linguist , I was all aquiver with anticipation to bury my face in this purported history of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Alas, despite being well-written and thoroughly researched, I’m having to fake it a bit to give this a full 3 stars. This book is partly a history of the writing/compiling/creation of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and partly a biography of two of the men intimately connected with its creation, the main editor of the OED, Professor James Murray, and a major contributor, Dr W. C. Minor. Lodderhose, Diana (30 September 2016). "Ioan Gruffudd Joins Mel Gibson & Sean Penn For 'The Professor And The Madman' ". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on 13 January 2017 . Retrieved 27 February 2017.As Murray became more and more famous, he became more and more uncomfortable with the attention. ”I’m a nobody,” he would write toward the end of the century, when fame had begun to creep up on him. “Treat me as a solar myth, or an echo, or an irrational quantity, or ignore me altogether.” The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the love of words (1sted.), UK, ISBN 978-0-14-027128-7, OCLC 42083202 {{ citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link). The "professor" referred to in the North American title is Sir James Murray, the chief editor of the OED during most of the project. Murray was a talented linguist and had other scholarly interests, and had taught in schools and worked in banking. Faced with the enormous task of producing a comprehensive dictionary, with a quotation illustrating the uses of each meaning of each word, and with evidence for the earliest use of each, Murray enlisted the help of dozens of amateur philologists as volunteer researchers.