The Dictionary Of Lost Words
Pip Williams, Chatto & Windus, £14.99
In 1887, motherless Esme spends her days in the Scriptorium – a shed in Oxford where her father and a team of mostly male lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary.
She begins to collect words neglected by the men, and another dictionary takes shape, brimming with words that reflect the female experience.