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Article: The Meaning of Madness.(Review)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- December 21, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester (HarperCollins, 242 pp., $22)
AT first glance, a hard-driving journalist and traveler to dangerous places would not seem the obvious person to write about the workings of the Philological Society in Victorian London and Oxford-even with murder and insanity thrown in. But Simon Winchester (whose previous books include Prison Diary: Argentina and In Holy Terror, about the fighting in Northern Ireland) has always regarded the Oxford English Dictionary as not merely a tool but a joy. In reading about its making, he came across the story of ...