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

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Mel Gibson Sues Producer for Sabotaging "Labor of Love" Film". The Hollywood Reporter. 31 July 2017. Archived from the original on 24 December 2017 . Retrieved 3 February 2019. There was one genuine “light bulb” moment of illumination discussed by the author that really left me floored with mouth agape. While giving a run down on the origin of the first dictionary, Winchester discusses the fact that Shakespeare, with his amazingly diverse vocabulary, was able to write such works with no centralized catalog of words allowing him to confirm their proper usage. This...was... staggering...to...me and was easily the most valuable insight I took away from this read. Minor's contributions salvage the work of the commission and of Murray, still judged too slow by the patrons. Murray goes to meet Minor and discovers his condition, and a strong friendship is immediately established between them. Murray decides to keep silent about Minor's condition from his Oxford colleagues and his wife Ada. Meanwhile, Eliza desperately accepts Minor's offer and goes to Broadmoor to face her husband's killer. However, Eliza finds herself pitying him and begins to visit him often, bringing him books as gifts; Minor reciprocates by teaching her to read so that she can pass it on to her children and allow them to have a better future. Brayne decides to let this relationship evolve as part of the healing experiment.

Tatiana Siegel (February 21, 2005). "Mel Gibson, Sean Penn to Star in 'Professor and the Madman' (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved August 2, 2016. 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. Insinuates that Doctor Brayn - Minor's psychologist after a much more lenient doctor - only revoked Minor's many privileges because he was jealous of Minor's fame with helping find quotes for the OED. I'm sorry - DOCTOR MINOR HAD JUST CUT OFF HIS OWN PENIS. DOCTOR BRAYN WAS NOT JEALOUS. HE WAS TRYING TO KEEP A SELF-HARMING SCHIZOPHRENIC FROM DOING MORE HARM TO HIMSELF. HE WAS DOING HIS JOB. Winchester goes further, though. He had already demonstrated how Minor was in serious decline by this point (I mean did I mention he cut off his own penis????), and then Doctor Brayn took away all his privileges. Winchester, who apparently has no concept of cause and effect, says that Minor's good health began to decline after the evil Brayn jealously did what he did. NO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Declining health -> cutting off penis -> revoking of privileges =/= cutting off penis -> jealousy on the part of the attending physician -> tragic decline of patient. That's some shady-ass logic right there. The son of an English missionary family, William Chester Minor, was born in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). He was a voracious reader who was encouraged to learn as many local languages as possible since his was a traveling missionary family. By age 12 the bright student knew Singhalese, Burmese, some Hindi and TamilMeanwhile, the first edition of Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage was published in 1926. James Murray wasn't quite as exciting as his pen pal, whom he did not know was in an asylum when he started receiving word slips for the OED. This is where the lexicography and etymology got a bit boring.

The pre-Oxford English Dictionary world of Samuel Johnson's dictionary, and a world of "anachronistic polysyllabic sesquipedalian", inkhorn terms designed to impress others is a ridiculous treat. The clergyman quoted writing from Lincolnshire begging for promotion as "sacerdotal dignity in my native country contiguate to me ... which your worshipful benignity could some inpenetrate for me" is a wonderful find. Minor turned out to be one of Murray’s most productive readers, supplying him and his team with tens of thousands of slips of paper, each containing an illustrative quotation of this or that word, culled from the book on his shelves. All communication was by post, and it was assumed that he was a private scholar of a shy disposition. It was not until 1897 that Murray at last made an excursion to Broadmoor and discovered, to his astonishment, the true circumstances of his most valued reader. The two became friends, despite Minor’s continuing dementia, and Murray gave a generous mention, in his introduction to the OED, to ‘Dr W C Minor’.I was frustrated by some of the fictional fluff in the book, and probably will be with the film: it was shot in Dublin, rather than Oxford, London, and Berkshire (cheaper). After serving in the Union Army during the American Civil War, Minor moved to England. Affected by delusions, he shot a man who he believed had broken into his room, and was consequently committed from 1872 to 1910 to a secure British psychiatric hospital. 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. Gardner, Eriq (20 June 2018). "Mel Gibson Loses Court Bid to Reclaim Rights to 'Madman' Film". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 5 July 2018 . Retrieved 4 July 2018. 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.

William Chester Minor, a retired U.S. Army surgeon, was committed at the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum for killing a man. Winchester’s 2003 book, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, which is apparently a broader history of the OED.Shot in Dublin in 2016, the film became part of a legal battle between Gibson and Safinia against Voltage Pictures, delaying its release until 2019 and resulting in the pair disowning the final product. Game of Thrones' Star Natalie Dormer Joins Sean Penn, Mel Gibson in 'Professor and the Madman' (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. 31 August 2016. Archived from the original on 14 December 2017 . Retrieved 27 February 2017. Until Samuel Johnson, an English writer and lexicographer, compiled A Dictionary of the English Language the English speaking people had few concise or friendly dictionaries to refer to for definitions and/or spellings. Johnson’s volume took nine years to complete and was published in 1755 with a total of 42,773 words defined and it weighed about 22 pounds. Johnson’s was the ‘go to’ dictionary until 150 years later when The Oxford English Dictionary (hereinafter referred to as OE) was published in 1928.

By the way, regardless of its present title it is an excellent book deserving of the 5 stars I have given it. And my buying it by honest mistake put me at no great loss. The price was most reasonable. (I might even take this opportunity to re-read it). 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 discussion of the cooperative process of compiling the OED and the monumental undertaking that such creating the OED was fascinating. Tens of thousands of amateur philologists researching and sending Murray’s team slips with words and brief histories of their origin, which were then compiled and processed by the Oxford committee. This was terrific stuff.

French director Luc Besson handed Mel Gibson the project, saying, "It isn't my first language. Maybe you can do something with this". [3] Gibson, who originally intended to direct, hired his Apocalypto co-screenwriter Farhad Safinia to replace him, while he remained in the role of James Murray. Sean Penn entered early talks to join the film as William Chester Minor in August 2016. [4] In August, Natalie Dormer signed on for a role. [5] In September, Ioan Gruffudd joined the cast. [6]

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