Oxford University Press's adoption of the New English Dictionary and appointment of Murray as editor

Oxford University Press’s adoption of the New English Dictionary project and the appointment of James Murray as editor transformed a proposal that had struggled to find a publisher into a working enterprise. The decision depended on Murray’s editorial promise, the Press’s willingness to revise its objections, and a formal agreement that set the work in motion. Its immediate consequences included a new base for the Dictionary and a public campaign for readers’ help—an appeal that eventually reached William Chester Minor in his cell at Broadmoor.

Murray as editor and Oxford as publisher

By the late 1870s, Murray had a substantial record but was not yet established as a dictionary editor. A member of the Philological Society since 1869, he had published work on Scottish dialect, undertaken extensive editing of Scottish poetry, and pursued a project on the declension of German nouns that remained unfinished. After leaving the Chartered Bank of India, he had returned to teaching at Mill Hill School. Frederick Furnivall, who was devoted to the Dictionary but, in the account’s assessment, lacked the personal qualities needed to lead it, considered Murray an ideal editor and approached him about the role.

The choice of publisher mattered as much as the choice of editor. Oxford University Press offered academic distinction, greater financial resources than many alternatives, and a more flexible attitude to the time a major literary undertaking might require. Murray was persuaded to prepare specimen pages to demonstrate the proposed work. In late autumn 1877 he sent Oxford examples built around four words: arrow, carouse, castle, and persuade. They went to the Press’s Delegates, its governing board, whose high academic standards and close attention to expenditure made approval far from automatic.

Specimens, objections, and a decision

The Delegates were dissatisfied with the specimens. They wanted stronger evidence that Murray had searched widely enough for quotations for each of the four words, questioned his treatment of pronunciation, and hesitated over whether the Dictionary should include etymologies. Oxford was already publishing a separate scholarly Etymological Dictionary, which made the proposed section a matter of institutional as well as editorial concern. Meanwhile, Furnivall continued to sound out other publishers and printers. Macmillan had been deeply involved at one stage but withdrew after a dispute with him.

Murray and Furnivall then looked toward Cambridge University Press, whose Syndics rejected the proposal. Negotiations and advocacy continued in common rooms and London clubs for weeks. Oxford did not simply reverse its position at once: over time, its representatives became more receptive to changes in the proposed design and to the possibility that the Dictionary could satisfy both intellectual and commercial expectations.

On 26 April 1878, Murray travelled to Oxford to meet the Delegates in person for the first time. He expected to be intimidated by them, while they anticipated that they might dismiss him. The encounter instead pleased both sides: Murray found he liked the senior men in the boardroom, and they came to like him. The Delegates decided to proceed, marking the decision with glasses of dry sherry. The meeting settled the direction of the project, though not its detailed terms.

The agreement and the scale of the work

Negotiations over the contract lasted another year and were often bitter. Murray, described as otherworldly, rarely conducted them in person; his practical-minded wife also had a part in the discussions. On 1 March 1879, nearly twenty-five years after Richard Chenevix Trench’s speech on the deficiencies of English dictionaries, the formal agreement was reached. Murray would edit the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles on behalf of the Philological Society.

The projected scale was formidable: an estimated 7,000 quarto pages in four thick volumes, to be completed in ten years. That estimate proved a woeful underestimate, but the agreement marked the point at which the work properly began. The project had moved from competing proposals, sample pages, and publisher deliberations to a defined editorial undertaking, and the work would continue rather than lapse again.

A Scriptorium and a public call for readers

Within days of the agreement, Murray made two practical decisions. He would build a corrugated-iron shed in the grounds of Mill Hill School, call it the Scriptorium, and edit the Dictionary there. He would also issue a four-page appeal for a fresh body of volunteers, asking the English-reading public to help examine books that had not yet been read for quotations. The request sought readers in Great Britain, America, and the British colonies, extending the project beyond the Society and its editors.

The appeal travelled through multiple ordinary channels. Magazines and newspapers printed the portions they judged likely to interest readers; bookshops and news-stands distributed copies, shop assistants handed them to customers, and librarians used them as bookmarks. Small wooden cases in shops and libraries allowed people to take and read the sheets. In this way, a decision made in an Oxford boardroom produced a dispersed invitation, carried through print and public spaces across Britain and its dominions.

From institutional adoption to collaborative work

One copy eventually reached one of two large cells on the top floor of Block 2 at Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane in Crowthorne. William Chester Minor, an inmate there for eight years, read it eagerly. Books filled one of his two cells from floor to ceiling; he was a Yale graduate, well read and curious, and wanted useful work to occupy an indefinite confinement. The invitation from Murray offered intellectual stimulus and, as Minor could see it, a possible measure of personal redemption. He wrote at once.

The later working relationship shows how the Press’s adoption of the project depended on more than the appointment of an editor. Minor developed indexed word-lists that allowed him to respond to requests for particular quotations rather than merely send citations from books as he encountered them. When the editors needed material, they could write to Crowthorne; Minor could search his indexes, locate the relevant passages, transcribe quotations, and send them to the Scriptorium. His first notable response to a request concerned art: of eighteen replies prompted by an article in the Athenaeum, his contained twenty-seven quotations. The chain from institutional decision to printed appeal, correspondence, indexes, and quotation slips made the Dictionary a collaborative undertaking, in which a decision to appoint Murray created the structure that could put a distant reader’s work to use.