The Oxford English Dictionary was a long work in progress. “Thirty-one years ensued before the last of 414,825 words was cataloged. From its inception in 1857, the enterprise had consumed 71 years and witnessed the deaths of numerous employees (including the astonishing James Augustus Henry Murray, who was editor from March 1879 until his death in the summer of 1915). The dictionary would number among its contributors J.R.R. Tolkien and novelist Julian Barnes. And, of course, a murderer.”