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Exploring Language and Identity in The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho

Patricia Leslie
Jun 10
5 min read

Book review: The Dictionary of Lost Words & The Bookbinder of Jericho

Genre: Historical fiction

Book covers. On the left is The Dictionary of Lost words with a blue background and on the right is The Bookbinder of Jericho with a red background. — *The Dictionary of Lost Words* and *The Bookbinder of Jericho* by Pip Williams

I enjoyed these titles immensely and I thoroughly recommend reading both in the order listed. The Bookbinder of Jericho refers to characters and events in The Dictionary of Lost Words. The stories take place in the early 1900s in Oxford (Jericho). It’s two different points of view of life lived in and around the Oxford University Press and associated archives where books, words, and their bindings are the stuff of life.

These stories are so well written that I feel I stepped into the worlds of Esme Nicoll and Peggy Jones, worlds where women yearn for more than what they’re allowed. Esme longs for words and a way to define her life experience. Peggy longs to read and learn about the books she helps to bind every day. Each woman fights against the restrictions placed on them by gender and position. Each works around the edges of what is socially acceptable and inch their way toward fulfilling their ambitions.

The settings are original and quirky. Esme grew up (and practically lived) in a Scriptorium during the years that the Oxford dictionary was edited and printed. Peggy and her sister Maude live in a canal boat called Calliope. Books and “rejects” from the bindery room (collected by their late mother and then by Peggy) line the Calliope’s walls. Yes, I am enamoured of a floating library… (read my review of The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George)

You can read the novels as standalone or as companion stories. They explore life in Oxford, England pre and post World War 1, the suffrage movement (and what it meant to ordinary women of the time), education and navigating personal ambitions. Character and relationship development give the story a solid baseline and are seamless from one page to the next. They grow as the stories grow.

Author, Pip Williams, has a good grasp on her research, levels of exposition, and pacing. Other reviews have mentioned “slow pace”. The Dictionary of Lost Words was just right. The Bookbinder of Jericho, was a little slower. This can be defended by the need to give the right amount of time and depth to the relationship between Peggy and Maude. Every character is given the chance to develop. In the case of Tilda, she was a minor, rather flat character in Dictionary but was given wings in Bookbinder.

My overall recommendation is to read The Dictionary of Lost Words first. You’ll then find a nice balance when you read The Bookbinder of Jericho. I was inspired to learn more about the women’s colleges of Oxford and the first women who graduated with degrees. In particular, Mary Somerville. If you have a thirst for learning more about words, the Oxford Dictionary and bookbinding, you’ll be in your element with these two novels.

Official Blurbs

The Dictionary of Lost Words

Trailer for The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

In 1901, the word 'Bondmaid' was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the 'Scriptorium', a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word 'bondmaid' flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women's experiences often go unrecorded. While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, secretly, she begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.Set when the women's suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. It's a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape the world and our experience of it.

The Bookbinder of Jericho

Trailer for The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams

What is lost when knowledge is withheld?

In 1914, when the war draws the young men of Britain away to fight, it is the women who must keep the nation running. Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho. Peggy is intelligent, ambitious and dreams of studying at Oxford University, but for most of her life she has been told her job is to bind the books, not read them. Maude, meanwhile, wants nothing more than what she has. She is extraordinary but vulnerable. Peggy needs to watch over her. When refugees arrive from the devastated cities of Belgium, it sends ripples through the community and through the sisters' lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future where she can use her intellect and not just her hands, but as war and illness reshape her world, it is love, and the responsibility that comes with it, that threaten to hold her back. The Bookbinder of Jericho is a story about knowledge - who makes it, who can access it, and what is lost when it is withheld. In this beautiful companion to the international bestseller The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams explores another little-known slice of history seen through women's eyes. Intelligent, thoughtful and rich with unforgettable characters, this is the novel of 2023.

About the author

Woman with short dark hair wearing white top and navy jacket. She is smiling into the camera — Author Pip Williams

Pip Williams is the author of social research, essays, memoir and the odd poem, but she is best known for her companion novels, The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho. Since its publication in 2020, The Dictionary of Lost Words has won a number of major Australian book awards, was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the prestigious Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in the UK. In 2022, it was chosen for the Reese Witherspoon Book Club, and it became a New York Times bestseller. As well as being adapted for stage, The Dictionary of Lost Words is being turned into a book concerto and has been optioned for a limited series. Pip’s second novel, The Bookbinder of Jericho, was published in 2023 and was an instant bestseller. In 2024, it won the Australian Book Industry Awards general fiction book of the year and was Dymocks’ number-one book in its top 101. Pip’s books have been published around the world and translated into more than 30 languages.