Editing William Chester Minor (section)

==Contributor to the ''Oxford English Dictionary''==
{{Main|Oxford English Dictionary#Early editors}}
It was probably through his correspondence with the London booksellers that he heard of the call for volunteers for what was to become the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' (OED). He devoted most of the remainder of his life to that work.<ref>{{Citation | url = http://oed.com/public/contrib/contributors#minor | contribution = William Chester Minor | title = Contributors | publisher = Oxford English Dictionary}}.</ref> He became one of the project's most effective volunteers, reading through his large personal library of antiquarian books and compiling quotations that illustrated the way particular words were used. He was often visited by the widow of the man he had killed, and she provided him with further books. The compilers of the dictionary published lists of words for which they wanted examples of usage. Minor provided these with increasing ease as the lists grew. It was many years before the ''OED''{{'}}s editor, [[James Murray (lexicographer)|James Murray]], learned of Minor's history and visited him in January 1891 (as well as many times thereafter). In 1899, Murray paid compliment to Minor's enormous contributions to the dictionary, stating, "we could easily illustrate the last four centuries from his quotations alone".<ref>{{cite book|title=The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary|author= Winchester, Simon|year=2004|page=201|publisher=[[OUP]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Caught in the Web of Words: James A.H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary|author=Murray, Katharine Maud Elisabeth|year=2001|page=306|publisher=Yale University Press |quote=In 1899 alone, Minor provided 12,000 quotations for the ''OED''}}</ref>