The Professor And The Madman:  A Tale Of Murder, Insanity, And The Making Of The Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester

I’m not sure how I feel about this book in its larger context.  On its own, this book is perfectly fine, an enjoyable volume that discusses the friendship of two men that helped along the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, one of them a lowland Scotsman in charge of the project, one Dr. James Murray, and the other an insane American murderer who was also a doctor and a veteran of the Civil War, one William Chester Minor.  The issue I have with this book is the question of the book’s relationship to another book that the author wrote about the creation of the Oxford English dictionary.  The suggestions for further reading of this book include a variety of books that the author states did a great job of talking about the history of the development of the OED, none of them written by the author himself.  And yet I have found that the author has written subsequently a book on the history of the OED, a good book it should be noted, but probably not an essential one.  Was this book the source of enough research about the OED that the author felt it profitable/useful to write another book on the subject, or was the author merely being modest in not recommending his own book?  It is hard to say.

Be that as it may, this book itself is a worthwhile one and a compelling if rather melancholy story.  Our story moves back and forth over the course of a bit more than 200 pages between the life story of Dr. Minor and the efforts of Dr. Minor and Dr. Murray on the dictionary itself.  We begin with a preface that portrays the moment when Dr. Murray finds out that one of his star dictionary-helpers is in fact an inmate at Broadmoor, one of the most notorious British asylums of the late 19th century.  Then we discuss the murder that led to that incarceration (1) as well as Murray’s own background and education (2).  The author explores the madness of the Civil War, including an incident of branding an Irish deserter, that may have encouraged Minor’s descent into madness (3) as well as the history of early efforts to create an English dictionary (4).  This leads to a discussion of the early efforts of the OED team to gather helpers for their massive and ambitious project (5) and the excellence of Minor’s contribution to these from his own voluminous reading (6, 7).  Some of the examples of Minor’s contributions follow (8) before the author talks about how the two doctors developed a sort of friendship despite their different circumstances (9).  At this point the book takes a darker turn, discussing Dr. Minor’s auto-castration and the damages that resulted from it (10) as well as the death of both doctors and the monument to their work that remains in the OED (11), followed by a brief postscript.

This book features at least a few thought-provoking questions that the author does not necessarily explore in depth but at least helpfully raises.  For one, is there a possible relationship between genius and madness?  Certainly those who are passionately committed to something, be it lexicography or something else, are often assumed to be maniacs of some kind by the ordinary people they meet, and dotty or eccentric at best.  Yet while there is a certain amount of obsessiveness and maniacal drive that is beneficial to one’s studies and one’s efforts, there is also just as obviously a line beyond which it is destructive to one’s own happiness and that of others.  Likewise, the author points out the problematic question of the etiology of mental illness.  To what extent can we blame hereditary factors or the experiences that we have to deal with.  Are there cases where both a congenital frailty as well as the brutality and traumatic aspects of life–certainly present in someone who was a surgeon during the Civil War–are necessary to lead to the flowering of mental illness?  How should people who are evidently both insane but also beneficial to society in various other ways (like reading and research and writing) be treated by society and protected from the harshness of existence in our world in such a way that their gifts can blossom without causing harm to themselves and others.  These are by no means easy questions to answer, in the late 19th century or today.