The Oxford English Dictionary is one of Western culture's greatest literary achievements, and yet, curiously, its creators are almost never acknowledged. Who were the people behind this unprecedented book? As Sarah Ogilvic reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, a daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, the inventor of the first American subway, a female antislavery activist in Philadelphia… and thousands more. A thrilling literary detective story, The Dictionary People unravels the mystery of the fascinating global cast of contributors who, for more than seventy years, helped to codify the way we read and write and speak, Their combined efforts resulted in what is arguably the greatest crowdsourcing endeavor in human history, the Wikipedia of its time. Here, then, is a celebration of words, language, and people, whose cccentricities and obsessions, triumphs and failures, enriched the English language.