Aggravated Mischief: Editing and Digitizing the Papers of Sir James Murray

ABSTRACT:The authors of this article are at work on a pilot digital edition of the papers of Sir James Murray in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. Murray was chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until his death, aged 78, in 1915. As he himself foresaw, the letters he exchanged almost daily over this period, with a host of correspondents, formed an essential part of "the whole material on which the Dictionary [was to] be built." Today they make fascinating and informative reading, while also providing a case-study of the role of letter-writing in nineteenth-century scholarly projects and networks. The article describes the origins and character of the Bodleian archive-not least its value in illuminating the creation of the OED-and sets out the nature and purpose of the edition, along with its planned future development.