Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman is billed as a biography with three interrelated subjects, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), James Murray, and William Minor.

    The OED is an unfailingly interesting subject. In the case of Murray and Minor the OED also provides something of a lifeline, both literally and figuratively. Figuratively, in the sense that Winchester's treatment of the two gentlemen is interestingly only when attached to the OED.

    The Professor of the book's title is the redoubtable James Murray, the linguist who devoted his entire professional career to the creation of the OED. William Minor, the Madman in question, was an important volunteer contributors to the OED.

    The brain trust of the OED had set themselves a truly daunting task, one in fact which took seventy years to complete. A complete etymological history for each word in the English language, a history based on literary usage, including the first usage for each word and subsequent examples of usage for each succeeding sense of meaning, would require as much volunteer support as possible.

    Dr. William Minor, a superb linguist interned in an insane asylum with a room full of well chosen antiquarian books, was ideally suited to provide substantial volunteer support to the OED project. It is interesting that someone in Minor's state could excel at an erudite intellectual task requiring extreme discernment and precision. Why Winchester felt compelled to dwell on Minor's pathology is not at all clear however.

    An entire chapter, "The unkindest cut" is spent analyzing Minor's act of self castration late in life. Throughout the book dubious speculations (i.e. exposure to frolicking south sea island girls in his youth) as to the nature and origins of Minor's mental illness, take the place of a world of genuinely compelling subjects which cry out for address.

    Minor's unique quarto system of lexicography, for example, is only fleetingly described. An annotated photographic example would have been fascinating. Furthermore, Winchester hints at other unusual and prolific volunteers instrumental in the OED's creation. Why he didn't provide a gallery of OED biographical portraits of volunteers instead of wallowing in Minor's pathetic perversion of mind is not at all obvious.

    James Murray himself is seen only through his importance to Minor and The OED. That would have been fine if Winchester had stuck with the OED as a guiding principle instead of wandering off into a fruitless analysis of nineteenth century mental health issues. Considering the voluminous correspondence which Murray carried out its hard to accept a portrait of him based only on a smattering of factual details.

    As to the OED itself, the history of its inadequate predecessors, its own beginnings, methods and manners, all make for marvelous reading. In the OED Winchester lighted upon a topic that cannot fail of interest and import. In vagrantly allowing Minor to become the guiding principle of the book Winchester ended up by striking a note in full ironic concordance with his subject's last name.