South Australian author Pip Williams’ much loved, best-selling novel has been adapted for the stage by Verity Laughton. It begins in 1886. As the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is being compiled by her father and his male colleagues, Esme starts to collect her own set of words neglected by the men. Meanwhile, the women’s rights movement is gaining traction.Read our feature on the production.

Limelight Editor’s Choice

Pip Williams’ award-winning New York Times bestseller and book club favourite, The Dictionary of Lost Words, has been beautifully transformed into a hit new play, coming soon to Melbourne. Directed by Jessica Arthur and adapted for the stage by Verity Laughton, this production from Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre Company South Australia is overflowing with lush sets, period costumes, and incredible heartfelt performances.

It’s 1886 and the very first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is being compiled. Four-year-old Esme Nicoll has a front row seat. Well, she’s hiding under the sorting table, anyway. As her father and his male colleagues decide which words stay and which go, Esme collects the discarded (often gendered) scraps to compile her own far more radical, far more magical dictionary.

A sweeping historical tale, The Dictionary of Lost Words follows Esme from her childhood in the 1880s, into adulthood at the height of the women’s suffrage movement and the beginning of the First World War.