The Oxford English Dictionary--or OED as it is commonly called--was the first dictionary "to detail the history of every discoverable English word,", wrote Jacques Barzun in his best-selling From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (2000).

Published in 1998, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester, is the story of how the OED came to be. The book is not quite history, nor is it biography or a novel, for that matter, but most of it is factual, and Winchester skillfully weaves together the elements of the title.

The madman of the title is William Chester Minor, an American surgeon and former captain in the Union forces. His experiences on the battlefields of the Civil War allegedly contributed to bringing out the manifestations of the schizophrenia with which he is diagnosed. His mental illness leads him to kill an innocent man in the streets of London, where he has just arrived.

Having sought the pardon of his victim's widow, the two develop a relationship of sorts. Visiting him at the asylum where he will spend most of his life, she brings him the books he requests. By an "ironic twist... a fortuitous accident," writes Winchester, her help provides Minor the opportunity to find out that a committee of scholars at Oxford University is asking for volunteers to submit quotations that would include specific words given to them, and for which they would offer definitions. The entries judged to be the most appropriate are to be included on the pages of the planned dictionary.

Minor, the son of an aristocratic Connecticut family, is an educated and highly intelligent man of culture. The leisure that his life circumstances afford him, added to his interest in words and language, will turn him into one of the most important collaborators of Oxford Professor James Murray, the head of the team, with whom he engages on a life-long epistolary relationship. Their occasional meetings bring additional intellectual nourishment to two like-minded individuals.

Our discussion covered much territory, from schizophrenia to the effect of syphilis on the brain to linguistics and the etymology of words. The treatment of Minor as a mental patient rather than a criminal was praised as the result of an exceptionally "enlightened attitude" on the part of Victorian England. Was this attitude widespread in Britain? There is reason for doubt.

His upbringing had left severe scars. An obsessive personality, Minor transferred his obsession with sex to an obsession with words and eventually with guilt, possibly harking back to his childhood in a family of missionaries.

Winchester's well-documented chapter on the Civil War led us to reflect upon the shocking cruelty and sadism of the punishment that was meted to deserters on both sides of the battle.

The first 12-volume edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published in 1927, nearly 50 years after its inception. Without the help of computers, it is difficult to imagine how the editors were able to make sense of the multitude of "entries" they received daily from those who participated in this project.