The Surgeon of Crowthorne
Encyclopedia
The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words is a book by Simon Winchester
Simon Winchester
Simon Winchester, OBE , is a British-American author and journalist who resides mostly in the United States. Through his career at The Guardian, Winchester covered numerous significant events including Bloody Sunday and the Watergate Scandal...

 that was first published in England in 1998. It was retitled
The Professor and the Madman:
A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary in the United States and Canada.

It tells the story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

(OED) and one of its most prolific early contributors, Dr. W.C. Minor
William Chester Minor
William Chester Minor, also known as W. C. Minor was an American army surgeon who, later, was one of the largest contributors of quotations to the Oxford English Dictionary...

, a retired United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

 surgeon
Surgery
Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...

. Minor was, at the time, imprisoned in the Broadmoor
Broadmoor Hospital
Broadmoor Hospital is a high-security psychiatric hospital at Crowthorne in the Borough of Bracknell Forest in Berkshire, England. It is the best known of the three high-security psychiatric hospitals in England, the other two being Ashworth and Rampton...

 Criminal Lunatic Asylum
Mental Hospital
Mental hospital may refer to:*Psychiatric hospital*hospital in Nepal named Mental Hospital...

, near the village of Crowthorne in Berkshire
Berkshire
Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...

, England. The 'professor' of the American title is the chief editor of the OED during most of the project, Sir James Murray
James Murray (lexicographer)
Sir James Augustus Henry Murray was a Scottish lexicographer and philologist. He was the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until his death.-Life and learning:...

. He was a talented linguist and had other scholarly interests, and he had taught in schools and worked in banking.

The book was a major success. Winchester went on to write The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
The Meaning of Everything
The Meaning of Everything is a 2003 book by Simon Winchester. It concerns the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary under the editorship of James Murray and others, one aspect of which Winchester had previously written about in The Surgeon of Crowthorne.- Sources :* Winchester, Simon, The...

(2003) about the broader history of the OED.

The movie rights for the novel were sold to Mel Gibson
Mel Gibson
Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson, AO is an American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter. Born in Peekskill, New York, Gibson moved with his parents to Sydney, Australia when he was 12 years old and later studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art.After appearing in...

 in 1998 and it was slated to be directed by Luc Besson
Luc Besson
Luc Besson is a French film director, writer, and producer. He is the creator of EuropaCorp film company. He has been involved with over 50 films, spanning 26 years, as writer, director, and/or producer.-Early life:...

 but is now being directed by John Boorman
John Boorman
John Boorman is a British filmmaker who is a long time resident of Ireland and is best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Zardoz, Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, Hope and Glory, The General and The Tailor of Panama.-Early life:Boorman was born in Shepperton, Surrey,...

.

See also

  • Dr William Chester Minor
    William Chester Minor
    William Chester Minor, also known as W. C. Minor was an American army surgeon who, later, was one of the largest contributors of quotations to the Oxford English Dictionary...

  • James Murray
    James Murray (lexicographer)
    Sir James Augustus Henry Murray was a Scottish lexicographer and philologist. He was the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until his death.-Life and learning:...

  • Crowdsourcing
    Crowdsourcing
    Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....

  • Larry Ashmead
    Larry Ashmead
    Lawrence Peel "Larry" Ashmead was an American book editor who helped create 100 books a year featuring such authors as Isaac Asimov, Quentin Crisp, Tony Hillerman, Susan Isaacs and Michael Korda at a string of publishers including Doubleday, Simon & Schuster, Lippincott, Harper & Row and its...


Editions

  • Winchester, Simon, The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words, Viking, 1998, ISBN 0-670-87862-6 (hardback UK).
  • Winchester, Simon, The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Oxford English Dictionary, Penguin, 1999, ISBN 0-14-027128-7 (paperback UK).
  • Winchester, Simon, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, Harper Collins, 1998, ISBN 0-06-017596-6 (hardback US).
  • Winchester, Simon, Der Mann, der die Worter liebte, ISBN 978-3442726431 (Germany)
  • Winchester, Simon, Le Fou et le Professeur, ISBN 978-2253150824 (France)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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