James Murray (lexicographer) - Definition and Overview

Sir James Augustus Henry Murray (1837-1915) was a Scottish lexicographer and philologist. He had no formal education after the age of fourteen but became a respected scholar by private study. He was the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879.

He had eleven children, the eldest Harold James Ruthven Murray becoming a prominent chess historian.

His biography was written by his granddaughter:

• Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary, K. M. Elisabeth Murray, Yale University Press, 2001, trade paperback, ISBN 0300089198

He is the professor in the book The Surgeon of Crowthorne (US title The Professor and the Madman). Dr. William Chester Minor, a volunteer who worked on the dictionary, was the madman.

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