The Reading Rendezvous

Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and the brink of World War I, the novel follows Esme, a young girl growing up at the feet of the lexicographers compiling the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Spending her childhood hiding beneath the sorting table in the Scriptorium, Esme secretly rescues discarded and forgotten slips of paper containing words deemed unworthy or unimportant by the “dictionary men”.

Realizing that words relating to women’s experiences and the common people are frequently ignored and unrecorded, she begins to collect these missing words to create her own alternative lexicon: The Dictionary of Lost Words.

To build her collection, Esme must step outside the sheltered academic world of Oxford, venturing out into the streets to gather the stories and language of market women, suffragettes, and everyday folks. It is a lyrical and deeply moving historical novel about the power of language, the patriarchal nature of history, and the women whose voices were hidden between the lines.