The Dictionary of Lost Words: Part 2, Chapter 3: September 1898 Summary & Analysis

Now that she’s no longer in school, Esme helps Mrs. Ballard in the kitchen and visits the Scriptorium occasionally. One day, she asks to be Da’s assistant. Esme does not want to get married; she wants to be an editor. Da agrees. Esme’s tasks include writing letters and returning books to college libraries across Oxford. When Dr. Murray learns of her errands, he invites her to accompany him to the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. He wants Esme to check quotations for the Dictionary, expediting his work. Dr. Murray convinces Mr. Nicholson, who works at the Bodleian, that Esme should be allowed in as a reader despite being a young woman. Despite clear reservations, Mr. Nicholson lets Esme read the library pledge aloud, meaning she is permitted to use the library.

As promised, Dr. Murray sends Esme to check quotations at the Bodleian and also has her deliver notes to the Oxford University Press. The first note of this kind regards a debate about the word forgo between two men working on the Dictionary project, Mr. Hart and Mr. Bradley. Esme rides to the Press, observing the young men and some women who work there. She finds Mr. Hart in the composing room, where compositors set type for various books. Dr. Murray’s note settles Hart and Bradley’s argument. Esme briefly encounters a young compositor named Gareth. She is fascinated by the Press’s inner workings and grateful to be out of Mrs. Ballard’s kitchen. Esme enjoys feeling useful in the Scriptorium. 

Lizzie remarks that Esme seems happier but worries she will be tempted to steal from the Scriptorium again. Esme realizes she has never been trusted with slips since starting her work. At the Press, Mr. Bradley’s daughter Eleanor tells Esme rumors of a third Dictionary editor and moving the Press to the Old Ashmolean, an old museum. Eleanor shows Esme the slips for go, and Esme is filled with shameful longing. That night, Esme suggests she could help sort slips, but Da says he must check with Dr. Murray. A few days later, Dr. Murray asks Esme to deliver two bundles of numbered slips, reminding her that there are no other copies of these definitions, making them precious.

Esme bikes with the slips in her satchel, weeping with gratitude for being trusted again. At the Press, she flips through the slips for grade, feeling one definition is subpar and laughing at her “arrogance.” Someone bumps her, spilling the slips. Gareth, the young compositor, helps Esme collect the fallen slips and gets her water because she looks faint. Luckily none of the slips are missing. Esme envies the way Gareth makes words real by setting them in type. Gareth claims he only gives them substance: words are real if they mean something to someone, regardless of whether they are written. Esme carefully delivers the slips to Mr. Hart, relieved to hand them over.

One day after the turn of the century, Dr. Murray fetches Esme from the kitchen. He and Da have set up a desk for her in the Scriptorium. Esme flashes back to the desk at Cauldshiels inside which an unnamed teacher repeatedly slammed her hands as punishment. She recovers and is intensely grateful to have a place of her own. Da says Lily would be proud of Esme. Every morning, she sorts the assistants’ mail and is now on Dr. Murray’s payroll. Esme enjoys the ritual of sorting the post and the predictable interactions with Dr. Murray and his assistants. Sometimes there are slips in the post, and Esme loves spending all day in the pigeon-holes sorting them.