The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Williams, Pip. Dictionary of Lost Words. Ballantine Books: 2020.

The Dictionary of Lost Words is a first person fictional account of a woman named Esme Nicoll who spends most of her life around or directly working on the production of the Oxford English Dictionary. Esme lost her mother and has no real memory of her. She is raised by her father, Harry Nicoll, who is a lexicographer working on the OED. She spends some of her days during her earliest years under the sorting table at the Scriptorium where men, including her father, work on the dictionary.

The words considered for inclusion in the dictionary and their definitions and quotations are kept on slips stored in pigeon-holes in the Scriptorium. One day a slip falls to the ground with the word, “bondmaid” on it. Esme brings it to Lizzie Lester’s room and hides it in Lizzie’s trunk. Lizzie is the Murray’s housekeeper and caring for Esme is one of her duties. Dr. Murray is a key editor of the OED.

As Esme grows up, she continues collecting words. She eventually becomes too old to stay under the sorting table, and she becomes less welcome in the Scriptorium once it is discovered that she has taken a slip. She is sent away to Cauldshiels, a boarding school for girls. While there she is mistreated by those in charge, and despite her request to go live with her godmother, Edith Thompson (Ditte), she is forced to stay until her aunt realizes she is being abused and her father brings her home. Esme is depressed and withdrawn when she gets home, but eventually she is given some simple tasks to do at the Scriptorium, and she earns a slight salary.

Esme begins going to the Covered Market with Lizzie. There she meets many women whose words are not included in the OED. Sometimes this is because they are considered vulgar, sometimes because they are considered unimportant, and sometimes because they have never been written down. Esme begins to collect these words on slips and keeps them in Lizzie’s trunk which she has labeled, the Dictionary of Lost Words.

Eventually Esme makes friends with Tilda and Bill Taylor. Tilda is an actress, and Bill is her brother. Tilda is very active in the suffrage movement for women, and she believes that action is the best way to get people’s attention. Esme attends Tilda’s performances constantly, and she eventually develops a sexual relationship with Bill that leads to the conception of a baby.

Esme never tells Bill about the baby, and she goes away to live with Ditte and Ditte’s sister, Beth. They are spinsters, and Ditte spends countless hours and years volunteering with the OED. The women are kind to Esme, and they are quite respected in their local intellectual circles despite being women. They introduce Esme to Sarah Brooks, a woman whose babies have both been born stillborn. Esme develops a friendship with Sarah, and Sarah helps Esme with the delivery of the baby, Megan. She and her husband adopt the baby, taking her to Australia.

Esme becomes depressed when she returns home. Ditte arranges for Esme and Lizzie to go spend some time at a cottage. At the cottage, LIzzie begins to come into her own as the woman of the house, and Esme heals emotionally and becomes physically stronger. A lot of Esme's healing is done through walking.

When the women return, Esme begins to get more and more responsibility at the Scriptorium. She eventually meets a man named Gareth Owen. Owen works at the Oxford University Press. The two develop a close friendship. Eventually, Esme tells Gareth about Megan, and the next day he proposes marriage to her. He does not offer her a ring, however. He, instead, spent the money turning Esme’s words into a book, The Dictionary of Lost Words. It has taken him a year to complete the book.

The two wed, and Gareth goes off to serve as an officer in World War I. One of his duties in the war is to edit out words from the soldiers’ letters home so as not to ruin the perception of the soldiers’ mothers that the war is glorious. He believes this is the kind thing to do, but he sends the redacted words to Esme for safekeeping. Esme, herself, reads stories of how women are treated in the war, and she puts these on slips, so that their experiences are preserved.

While Gareth is away, Esme volunteers at the Radcliffe Infirmary visiting the wounded. She spends time with one man, Bertie Northrop, in particular who has war neurosis and cannot speak or understand words. Esme begins to teach him Esperanto, a language meant to be very easy to learn. One day, a cruel patient starts screaming, “bomb,” and Bertie panics. He is only calmed down when Esme speaks Esperanto words with him and hugs him. Esme gets word that Gareth has died in the war. She decides to take a job working with wounded soldiers and leaves the OED project.

The book ends with a letter from Ditte to Megan. She has sent her the trunk with all of Esme’s words as Esme has died. Esme died at 46 years old. She was hit by a lorry on Westminster Bridge while interviewing the woman on the fringes about how the Equal Franchise Act will affect them. Megan spends days looking through the trunk. Over the years, she works as a lexicographer and professor eventually giving a final talk entitled “The Dictionary of Lost Words” which she begins by discussing the word, “bondmaid,” the first word Esme ever stole from under the sorting table.