The Dictionary of Lost Words

Pip Williams was born in London, grew up in Sydney and now calls the Adelaide Hills home. She is co-author of the book Time Bomb: Work, Rest and Play in Australia Today (NewSouth Books, 2012) and in 2017 she wrote One Italian Summer, a memoir of her family’s travels in search of the good life, which was published with Affirm Press. Pip has also published travel articles, book reviews, flash fiction and poetry.

In The Dictionary of Lost Words Pip has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary and found a tale of missing words and the lives of women lived between the lines. It is her first novel.

‘What a novel of words, their adventure and their capacity to define and, above all, challenge the world. There will not be this year a more original novel published. I just know it.’

TOM KENEALLY, author of Schindler’s Ark and The Daughters of Mars

The Dictionary of Lost Words fulfils all the promises of the best historical fiction – a thoroughly original concept married to beautifully rendered characters, immersive setting and intensely satisfying storytelling. Touching on the suffragette movement and the Great War, Pip Williams’ meticulously imagined novel offers a portrait of an unforgettable woman – resilient, humble, generous, self-knowing and always strong-spined – who invents a provocative solution to the too frequent exclusion of women’s lives and cares from the official register.

MELISSA ASHLEY, author of The Birdman’s Wife and The Bee and the Orange Tree

Published by Affirm Press in 2020

28 Thistlethwaite Street, South Melbourne, VIC 3205.

www.affirmpress.com.au

Text and copyright © Pip Williams, 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

without prior permission of the publisher.

Title: The Dictionary of Lost Words / Pip Williams, author.

ISBN: 9781925972597 (paperback)

Cover and internal design by Lisa White

Typeset in 12/18 Minion Pro by J&M Typesetting

For Ma and Pa

Before the lost word, there was another. It arrived at the Scriptorium in a second-hand envelope, the old address crossed out and Dr Murray, Sunnyside, Oxford, written in its place.

It was Da’s job to open the post and mine to sit on his lap, like a queen on her throne, and help him ease each word out of its folded cradle. He’d tell me what pile to put it on and sometimes he’d pause, cover my hand with his, and guide my finger up and down and around the letters, sounding them into my ear. He’d say the word, and I would echo it, then he’d tell me what it meant.

This word was written on a scrap of brown paper, its edges rough where it had been torn to match Dr Murray’s preferred dimensions. Da paused, and I readied myself to learn it. But his hand didn’t cover mine, and when I turned to hurry him, the look on his face made me stop; as close as we were, he looked far away.

I turned back to the word and tried to understand. Without his hand to guide me, I traced each letter.

‘What does it say?’ I asked.

‘Lily,’ he said.

‘Like Mamma?’

‘Like Mamma.’

‘Does that mean she’ll be in the Dictionary?’

‘In a way, yes.’

‘Will we all be in the Dictionary?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

I felt myself rise and fall on the movement of his breath.

‘A name must mean something to be in the Dictionary.’

I looked at the word again. ‘Was Mamma like a flower?’ I asked.

Da nodded. ‘The most beautiful flower.’

He picked up the word and read the sentence beneath it. Then he turned it over, looking for more. ‘It’s incomplete,’ he said. But he read it again, his eyes flicking back and forth as if he might find what was missing. He put the word down on the smallest pile.

Da pushed his chair back from the sorting table. I climbed off his lap and readied myself to hold the first pile of slips. This was another job I could help with, and I loved to see each word find its place among the pigeon-holes. He picked up the smallest pile, and I tried to guess where Mamma would go. ‘Not too high and not too low,’ I sang to myself. But instead of putting the words in my hand, Da took three long steps towards the fire grate and threw them into the flames.

There were three slips. When they left his hand, each was danced by the draft of heat to a different resting place. Before it had even landed, I saw lily begin to curl.

I heard myself scream as I ran towards the grate. I heard Da bellow my name. The slip was writhing.

I reached in to rescue it, even as the brown paper charred and the letters written on it turned to shadows. I thought I might hold it like an oak leaf, faded and winter-crisp, but when I wrapped my fingers around the word, it shattered.

I might have stayed in that moment forever, but Da yanked me away with a force that winded. He ran with me out of the Scriptorium and plunged my hand into the snow. His face was ashen, so I told him it didn’t hurt, but when I unfurled my hand, the blackened shards of the word were stuck to my melted skin.

Some words are more important than others – I learned this, growing up in the Scriptorium. But it took me a long time to understand why.

Scriptorium. It sounds as if it might have been a grand building, where the lightest footstep would echo between marble floor and gilded dome. But it was just a shed, in the back garden of a house in Oxford.

Instead of storing shovels and rakes, the shed stored words. Every word in the English language was written on a slip of paper the size of a postcard. Volunteers posted them from all over the world, and they