The Professor and the Madman

By Simon Winchester

Remember letters? They were the chief means of communicating before we had smartphones, the Internet, and TikTok. And rather than meaningless drivel that reaches thousands of strangers, letters provided content that was not only well-considered but personal.

Simon Winchester’s “The Professor and the Madman” recounts the tale of an unlikely exchange of letters, in 19th-century England, between James Murray, schoolmaster, bank clerk and self-taught scholar, and Doctor William Minor, an American-born surgeon who unbeknownst to Murray was a resident in a UK insane asylum.

You see, Minor was a Yale graduate and a practicing surgeon for the Union Side in the Civil War. It was believed he was driven mad by the death and destruction he witnessed on the battlefield—in today’s terms, he had PTSD. Minor’s paranoia became so destructive that he moved out of the country and to the UK after the war. One night, in a dodgy London neighborhood, he accidentally shot a man he thought was pursuing him, was tried and found guilty, then sent to a mental hospital for the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, Murray was quietly pursuing a passion for books and languages. His love of words eventually brought him into the company of British philologists, who welcomed his enthusiasm and energy—which they figured would be critical in helping them create what would become the Oxford English dictionary. A goal envisioned by Samuel Johnson, Jonathan Swift, and others for centuries.

Murray himself needed a helper who would have the time to not only read voraciously, but do all the dirty work of researching, alphabetizing, and reporting his/her findings in written correspondence. Enter Dr. William Minor, lifetime resident of the local insane asylum.

This zippy tale is as juicy as any spy novel. What ultimately happens when Murray does find out about his star pupil will not be revealed here. But you’ll be turning pages faster than the speed of Google.

Winchester sagely points out that if it weren’t for the murder of an innocent man, we might never have the greatest dictionary in the world at our disposal today. Taking that one step further, if the Internet hadn’t been invented, we’d probably still be writing letters.

Given the madness of social media and the Twitterverse, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Enjoy.