This book begins somewhat abruptly with a lengthy treatment of the idioms walking dictionary (a well-educated person who can provide any information about words and their meanings) and sleeping dictionary (a woman in a sexual relationship with a foreign man who teaches him her language), plunging the reader straight in medias res, without the benefit of much introduction. This is rather disconcerting until the reader reaches the general context later in chapter 1 and can get a sense of the book's scope. In my opinion this chapter would be better structured the other way round, with the examples following rather than preceding the background.
Lindsay Russell has used a feminist historiographical lens on her subject. Some readers may feel uneasy about criticising the past through a modern day sensibility about gender roles: altera tempora, altera mores. For example, Russell points out that female authors appear sparsely among the illustrative quotations of the first edition of the OED, but there were comparatively few publications by women at that time. More generally, although Russell demonstrates that the history of lexicography is sexist and androcentric, dictionaries more so than other genres are a reflection of their times.
Chapter 2, however, provides a very interesting account of early female patrons of dictionaries. This proves that women as far back as the sixteenth century were useful not only as the passive, mostly uneducated audience for whom many ‘hard word’ dictionaries were intended, but also that behind the scenes several wealthy and powerful females were active as sponsors of dictionary projects, lending their own linguistic expertise as well as financial and practical support to early lexicographers Bullokar, Cawdrey, DuWés, Palsgrave, Boyers, and Florio. Chapter 3 makes a significant contribution to the field in the form of a lengthy table in chronological order of over 150 women who themselves actually wrote or compiled dictionaries from 1486 to 1900. Some of these women remain anonymous, some used a pseudonym, many have been overlooked by history until now. This is original, meticulous research and one of the gems of this book.
Chapter 4 focuses on the wives, daughters, and friends of lexicographers whose lives were enmeshed with dictionary projects that were often based in their homes. Their multifarious roles in Samuel Johnson's, James Murray's, and Joseph Wright's dictionaries are carefully enumerated here, and Russell corrects some misinformation in past publications by other authors and biographers. Thus, she makes it clear that even significant and expert contributions made by these women over many years went largely unacknowledged, unpaid, and viewed even by some scholars today as personal rather than professional assistance, due to their gender. Chapter 5 describes the feminist dictionaries of 1970 to 2015 which aimed to draw attention to the negative stereotypes inherent in many dictionaries’ definitions, and the book ends symmetrically with a neat return to its opening images of the walking dictionary and the sleeping dictionary.
Russell's thorough scholarship and wide research are evidenced by densely packed in-text citations and thirty pages of references. There is also a useful index. No review of this impressive book could close without kudos to the designer, who has produced a masterpiece—simply the most beautiful cover of an academic book that I have ever come across.
