Dictionaries are a powerful genre, perceived as authoritative and objective records of the language, impervious to personal bias. But who makes dictionaries shapes both how they are constructed and how they are used. Tracing the craft of dictionary making from the fifteenth century to the present day, this book explores the vital but little-known significance of women and gender in the creation of English language dictionaries. Women worked as dictionary patrons, collaborators, readers, compilers, and critics, while gender ideologies served, at turns, to prevent, secure, and veil women's involvements and innovations in dictionary making. Combining historical, rhetorical, and feminist methods, this is a monumental recovery of six centuries of women's participation in dictionary making and a robust investigation of how the social life of the genre is influenced by the social expectations of gender.

‘This fascinating work seeks to reclaim the often forgotten and neglected role of women in the making of dictionaries, and is a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on lexicography.'

Sarah Ogilvie - Stanford University, California and author of Words of the World: A Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary

‘Russell’s thorough scholarship and wide research are evidenced by densely packed in-text citations and thirty pages of references … 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.’

Katherine J. Quigley Source: Language in Society