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The Professor and the Madman

Sean Penn

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Sean Penn and Mel Gibson‘s 2019 film The Professor and the Madman has just arrived on Netflix, and it’s here to teach you an important lesson in the history of the English language. The pair of actors play the unlikely duo responsible for the very first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in the mid-18th-century. Even though the Oxford English Dictionary is real, this story seems too odd to be true.

Professor James Murray (Gibson) is working in Oxford as an editor of the new Oxford English Dictionary. As he catalogs words and their definitions, he begins receiving submissions from a source at the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. He receives over 10,000 entries from the “madman” — Dr. William Chester Minor (Penn), a retired Army surgeon in the United States. The pair work together to write the dictionary through letters.

Is The Professor and the Madman based on a true story, or is it just lore? Is there a book? Here’s everything you need to know about The Professor and the Madman:

Is The Professor and the Madman based on a true story?

As mad as it sounds, The Professor and the Madman is based on a true story. Sir James Murray was a real person — he’s even listed on the Oxford English Dictionary website. As he was working on editing the first Oxford English Dictionary, he put out a call for volunteers and Dr. William Chester Minor responded. He ended up contributing thousands of quotations to the first edition of the dictionary.

Is The Professor and the Madman based on a book?

Yes, the movie The Professor and the Madman is based on a 1998 book by Simon Winchester. The first edition was called The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness, and the Love of Words. Later, the title was changed to The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the First Oxford Dictionary — hence, the title of the movie. And to further the fact that it’s based on a true story, the book is categorized as a biography.