A 19th-century photograph in The Dictionary People, by Sarah Ogilvie, shows the editorial team of the Oxford English Dictionary (first edition) looking exactly as you might expect them to look. In the foreground, wearing a mortarboard and the long white beard of a wizard, stands James Murray, the editor. Surrounded by stacks of paper, his staff bend diligently over their work behind him. Only half of them are bearded (and none so abundantly as Murray), but they are all neatly suited and male.
There is one anomaly in this image of Victorian scholarship, though: the picture was taken not in a library, nor even an office, but in a shed. Specifically, a shed in the garden of a private home in Oxford. More specifically, Murray’s home, where also lived his wife and their 11 children.
