The Oxford Bookseller

The year is 1914 and the young men are leaving for war. It is up to the women to keep Britain running. Peggy works as a bookbinder at the Clarendon Press in Oxford, lives on a houseboat with her twin sister Maud, and yearns for an education. She secretly reads the books she binds, taking the rejects home, adding to the collection that their mother, also a bookbinder, started. Peggy longs to study at Oxford University, but has been told her entire life that her role is to bind books, not to read them. On top of that, she has to care for Maud, who is exceptional, different, and vulnerable. Letters from friends on the front and encounters with Belgian war refugees and the wounded not only acquaint Peggy with the reality of a brutal war, but also open up the possibility of a change in a life that seemed to be predestined. However, love is a great commitment. The Dictionary of Lost Words draws the reader not only into the atmosphere of wartime England, but also into a time when women had to fight for every step towards equality. It is a novel about knowledge, about who creates it, who has access to it, and what society loses when it is denied to someone.