Adult Book Club

The Professor and the Madman--A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary  (1998)

By Simon Winchester

When compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary began in 1857, it was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken.  As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane. (www.amazon.com)