" THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WO.DS [is] a captivating and slyly subversive fictional paean to the real women whose work on the Oxford English Dictionary went largely unheralded. The daughter of a widower who toils with a team of scholars in a glorified garden shed that members of the project call the Scriptorium, Esme begins her story in 1887 when the piles of much-debated filing cards spilling off desktops and crammed into cubbyholes are mainly playthings to a 6-year-old child. But as she grows up and is given tasks of her own at the Scriptorium, Esme comes to question some of the logic behind the activities of her so-called superiors. As her father explains, certain words “may be commonly spoken, but if they are not commonly written they will not be included” in the vast dictionary project....Esme: “I’m sure there are plenty of wonderful words flying around that have never been written on a slip of paper....”