Mill Hill School

Mill Hill School was both a teaching post for James Murray and the setting for an important early phase of his work on the Dictionary. After leaving the Chartered Bank of India, he returned to teaching at the school; in its grounds he established the Scriptorium, a purpose-built workplace from which he edited the Dictionary and sought the readers needed to advance it.

Murray's Return to Teaching

By 1873, after leaving the bank, Murray had resumed teaching at Mill Hill School. The post followed a period in which he had made a reputation through work on Scottish dialect and other demanding scholarly projects. His return to teaching placed him in a setting where his academic work and his occupation could proceed alongside one another.

The Scriptorium and the Dictionary

After the Dictionary's publication agreement was formally settled in 1879, Murray made plans to build a corrugated-iron shed in the school's grounds. He named it the Scriptorium and intended it as the place from which he would edit the Dictionary. The structure gave the undertaking a dedicated physical base within the school grounds, turning a large editorial project into daily work conducted in a specific workplace.

A Base for Public Collaboration

Murray's plans for the Scriptorium went together with a second decision: to issue a four-page appeal to English-speaking and English-reading people for a new corps of volunteers. The appeal called for readers in Great Britain, America, and the British Colonies to examine books and extract quotations from those still unread. It circulated through newspapers and magazines, bookshops, news-stands, and libraries. Mill Hill School thus anchors the transition from the stalled earlier effort to Murray's organized editorial work: its grounds housed the Scriptorium, while his appeal widened the labor of dictionary-making beyond the school.