The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams Review: A Richly Researched Historical Fiction Debut

The Dictionary of Lost Words is a historical novel set during the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, spanning the height of the women's suffrage movement and the approach of the Great War. Its central character, Esme, grows up literally beneath the table where the great lexicographical project is being assembled — her father one of its editors — and she begins collecting the words that fall through the cracks: terms used by women, by the working class, by those whose speech the official compilers deemed unworthy of record. The novel's animating argument, embedded in its fiction, is that the English language as codified in the OED reflects a history written by men, and that an entire parallel vocabulary of women's experience was quietly left behind. As publisher Penguin Random House describes it, the novel "reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men."

Williams, who was born in London, grew up in Sydney, and now lives in South Australia's Adelaide Hills, conducted extensive archival research into the OED and its editors, many of whom appear as named characters in Esme's life. This depth of preparation is visible in the novel's construction: as penguinrandomhouse.com notes, Williams "provides readers with detailed background and biographical information pointing to extensive research about the Oxford English Dictionary and its editors." The result is a dual portrait — of one of the English-speaking world's most ambitious intellectual undertakings and of the women who contributed to it largely without credit. The suffrage movement and the First World War are not backdrop decoration but structural forces that shape Esme's world and the fate of the words she is trying to preserve.

The novel earned significant recognition on publication. It became a New York Times bestseller and holds the distinction of being the first Australian novel selected for Reese Witherspoon's Book Club. Critical commentary from named outlets has been warm. Critics called it "a lexicographer's dream of a novel" and "an imaginative love letter to dictionaries." Bookreporter described how Williams "will convince you of a word's importance in a most lovely and charismatic story." The New York Times, as quoted by Penguin Random House's promotional materials, called it "delightful… a captivating and slyly subversive fictional paean to the real women whose work on the Oxford English Dictionary" shaped the language. Reviewing the novel for The Sydney Morning Herald, Jo Case wrote that Williams "combines the storytelling scale and intimate detail of a 19th-century novel" with a contemporary sensibility. Blurb praise from fellow authors has also been notable: Marie Benedict, author of The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, described it as "a marvelous exploration into the ways in which spoken and written language impact us" that is "a delight and an education."

The novel's central conceit — that an ordinary girl raised among lexicographers becomes the archivist of a shadow dictionary — is both inventive and emotionally coherent. Susan Wiggs, author of The Lost and Found Bookshop, called it "charming, inventive, and utterly irresistible," adding that it is "the story we all need right now." The dual timelines of the OED's compilation and the suffrage movement give the book its structural tension, while Esme's personal stakes — what language we keep, what we discard, and who decides — give it contemporary resonance. Williams's debut is notable precisely because it transforms what could have been a niche historical curiosity (the making of a dictionary) into a story with broad emotional and political stakes.

The Dictionary of Lost Words is designed for readers drawn to character-driven historical fiction with an intellectual backbone — those who enjoy novels that smuggle serious questions about power, gender, and representation into richly detailed period settings. Readers with an interest in language, literary history, or the suffrage era are particularly well served. Those who prefer faster-paced plotting over immersive, detail-dense storytelling may find the novel's deliberately expansive pace a challenge; the book commits fully to the tempo and texture of its 19th-century narrative model. But for its intended audience — readers who want to be absorbed into a world as much as driven through a plot — Williams's debut delivers a narrative that multiple critics have described as both educational and genuinely compelling.