The
Surgeon of Crowthorne
"The Professor and the Madman" redirects here. For the film,
see The
Professor and the Madman (film).
Paperback Edition, Penguin Books UK - 1999
The
Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words is a
book by Simon Winchester 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.
Contents
It tells
the story of the making of the Oxford English
Dictionary (OED) and one of its most prolific early
contributors, Dr. W. C. Minor, a
retired United
States Army surgeon. Minor was, at the time, imprisoned in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, near the village of Crowthorne in Berkshire, England. The 'professor' of the American
title is the chief editor of the OED during most
of the project, Sir James Murray.
Murray was a talented linguist and had other scholarly interests, and he 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 had turned to an early form of crowdsourcing (a word not coined until the 21st
century)—enlisting the help of dozens of amateur philologists as volunteer researchers.
History of creation
A
journalist with three decades of experience, and the author of a dozen
travel-inspired books, Winchester's initial proposal to write a book about an
obscure lexicographer met with rejection. Only when Harper Collins editor Larry Ashmead read the proposal and championed the
book did Winchester pursue the necessary research in earnest.[1] Of
the project Ashmead said "we can make lexicography cool".[2] It
was Ashmead who persuaded Winchester to call the US edition The Professor and the Madman (over Winchester's
objection that Murray was not a professor), saying "No one here knows what
the hell a Crowthorne is."[2]
ReceptionEdit
The book
was a major success.[3][4][5] Winchester
went on to write The Meaning of
Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (2003)
about the broader history of the OED.
Film adaptation
The movie
rights for the book were bought by Mel Gibson's Icon Productions in 1998.[1] John Boorman wrote a script and was at one time
tapped to direct, as was Luc Besson.[1][6][7] In
August 2016 it was announced that Farhad Safinia was to direct an adaptation,
called The
Professor and the Madman, starring Gibson as Murray
and Sean Penn as Minor.[8]
References
1.
^ a b c Mel Gussow (December 4, 2006). "The Strange Case of the Madman With a Quotation for
Every Word". The New York Times. Retrieved July 17, 2010.
2.
^ a b Simon Winchester (28
September 2010). "Larry Ashmead obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
3.
^ review: E.S. Turner, The
Lexicographer in the Asylum, Times Literary Supplement, June 26. 1998
4.
^ review: R. Bernstein, Books
of the Times: Searching for a Life, He Found the Language. New York Times,
September 16, 1998
5.
^ List of reviews at complete review
6.
^ Nicola
Christie (21 February 2005). "Sneak preview: It's a Wonderful Life". The Daily Telegraph.
Retrieved 21 February2012.
7.
^ Zorianna
Kit (December 13, 2000). "Icon, Par Refer To Boorman For 'madman' Helm". The Hollywood
Reporter(republished by AllBusiness). Retrieved 21 February 2012.
8.
^ Tatiana
Siegel (21 February 2005). "Mel Gibson, Sean Penn to Star in 'Professor and the
Madman' (Exclusive)". The Hollywood
Reporter. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
EditionsEdit
·
Winchester, Simon (1998). The Surgeon of
Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words (hardback
ed.). UK: Viking. ISBN 0-670-87862-6.
·
Winchester, Simon (1999). The Surgeon of
Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Oxford English
Dictionary (paperback ed.). UK: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-027128-7.
·
Winchester, Simon (1998). The Professor
and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford
English Dictionary(hardback ed.). US: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-017596-6.
·
Winchester, Simon. Der Mann, der die
Worter liebte (in German). ISBN 978-3-442-72643-1.
·
Winchester, Simon. Le Fou et le
Professeur (in French). ISBN 978-2-253-15082-4.
External links
·
AskOxford.com interview Winchester speaks about
the book to John Simpson, Chief Editor of the OED
