The Dictionary City: Londoners and the Oxford English Dictionary 

The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary was one of the world's first crowd-sourced projects in the nineteenth century. People from all around the world sent in their local words, but no city played a more important role than London. In this lecture, Professor Sarah Ogilvie, author of The Dictionary People: the unsung heroes of the Oxford English Dictionary, tells the fascinating stories of some of the hundreds of

Londoners who helped create the world's largest English dictionary. She has unearthed a fascinating group of people across all social classes who represent some of the most interesting contributors to the Dictionary from all parts of this great city one hundred and fifty years ago. From a pornographer living in Bloomsbury who sent in sex words, to a servant in Eaton Square, a suffragist in St John's Wood, a plant expert at Kew Gardens, a coin specialist at the Royal Mint, and - yes! - a Gresham Professor of Geometry, this is a people's history of one of our most famous books.