Dictionary of Lost Words: Lost, Found, Shared

📚Today we discuss Pip Williams' "Dictionary of Lost Words", which follows Esme Nicoll the daughter of a lexicographer working on the Oxford English Dictionary. Words are powerful, we all know that. But why? What gives them their power? and what happens when those words are taken away? Join us for this and much more! We hope you love this highly anticipated episode!

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Transcript

  It's definitely recording now. Hey guys. Turns out we just recorded a whole bunch and I had no, it wasn't recording because Cait press record, didn't click record. Anyways, take two. How are we all going? It's been a while. I was gone for like 11 days up in Townsville and Caitlin was kind of sick, so nothing really happened before I left.

So here we are halfway through July with. Our next book, the Dictionary of Lost 

Words, and I've actually heard from a few people who are very excited about this episode. So hopefully we do it justice. I hope so. It's a 

very, very good book. So I guess without further ado, let's get into it again.  📍 Again, the second time today.

 Hi, and welcome to the Literary Lamppost Podcast, where we analyze books and see what we can 

learn from them. I'm Caitlin. I'm a math grad student, but I love English and I love analyzing literature. I'm getting better at saying that. Yes, I. Good job, and I'm Ashley, assistant editor for Magazine and a Writer.

Today we are talking about the dictionary of Lost Words, which was published in 2020, written by Pip Williams, who is an Australian author, and it was actually a best seller for a while after it came out, so it was very popular. A lot of people have read this book and have really enjoyed it. 

It 

covers 

a time span of more than a hundred years, starting in 1882, going until 1989 with events set in England and Australia, though it mostly follows the life of one woman in England, and then it skips to a later time at the end.

It's actually based around the true event of the compilation of Oxford University press's new English dictionary. Now known as the Oxford English Dictionary, we are going to be calling it the OED because that is too long. It was compiled by a team of Lexicographers, led by Sir James Murray, and helped by all of his 11 children.

Dang, 11 children. I can barely sustain a cat. Yeah. Well, the economy, Murray began compiling the dictionary in 1879, and he actually never finished it. He died in 1915 and it was completed by his fellow editors in 1928. Which was like a hundred years ago. 

Yeah. It's crazy to think that there actually wasn't really, well, it was worth it.

There might have been like primitive versions of dictionaries before this, but I think this was the first attempt to try and categorize all. Words, English language. In the English, English, English, language, language, English language. I think that there were a few, like basic kind of dictionaries before.

Yeah, 

but not one. Not one like this. Not one like this, 

yeah. 

Yeah. The second edition appeared in 1989, and it continually goes through revisions and updates, adding words as language changes. 

Yeah. You know, we take the dictionary for granted, but it's actually quite incredible that we have this book. That brings this process to life.

I wouldn't have known about how dictionaries were put together if it weren't for this book. 

I know. Same and honestly. Now, if we wanna know a definition, we Google it or young people ask Chachi. Bt apparently nowadays don't do that. It gives false information. Yeah. Anyways. But I never really thought about the whole process of.

Choosing that word and coming up with a definition for it, and then putting it in a book with a bunch of other words. And this 

book is really cool because it goes through that whole process. It's very cool. The book follows the story of Esme, the daughter of one of the fictional lexicographers working on the dictionary.

And in today's episode we're gonna talk about the power of language and also some historical social issues. How women spoke up despite living in a man's world and the people that supported them along the way. So Esme Nichol grows up in the Scriptorium where her father helps compile the OED. The Scriptorium is basically a shed on the back of a property where all the magic happens.

And as a child, she begins collecting words that are discarded or excluded from the dictionary. She does this in secret. She first picks up a discarded slip for the word bond made, which first sparks her interest in these lost words. As she grows older, she becomes aware that the OED reflects mainly male academic perspectives and overlooks words used by working class people and women.

So she 

starts to gather these quote unquote lost words in a trunk that she keeps in her room, and she starts her own unofficial dictionary. She forms these 

close relationships with people who help her learn about life beyond academia. There's Lizzie, who is a servant at her house, and also Tilda, a suffragette and friend, 

and so she takes these words and she gives them definitions following the same process that's happening at the Scriptorium.

With these other words, which is really cool. So she learns these new words from Lizzie who shares working class vocabulary and birth related terms, and from suffragettes and female activists like Tilda, who are using these powerful political words that are not really found in the OED and also from women at the market where she overhears these.

Everyday conversations and slang. 

They're often words relating to childbirth, menstruation, and female anatomy. Things that were really not considered polite at all to talk about in society. Words relating to domestic life, relationships and intimacy, grief, floss trauma, especially during and after the war, and also slang and dialects used by communities not mainstream and esmi.

Oh, I keep saying her name wrong. Asay. Asay. In my head, when I was reading the book, it was Esme and so saying it ASME seems a bit weird to me. Anyway, we Googled it right before we started and learned. We'd been saying it wrong for a long time. Esme. Ultimately compiles her own collection of women's words, a dictionary that honors the voices of these people that were not considered, which her fiance, Gareth, who is a compositor at the press.

So he puts together the books he actually prints and binds it for her. She becomes involved in the women's suffrage movement, inspired by Tilda and others that she meets. And during World War I, she witnesses the suffering and silence of those affected, especially women whose language is. Very rarely documented and through the loss that she experiences during the war and other things, she's really deeply affected.

And these experiences reinforce the importance to her of preserving forgotten words and stories. So one really good quote from the book is words are like stories They change as they're passed from mouth to mouth. Their meaning stretch or truncate to fit what needs to be said. And. I actually find language fascinating.

I love how it changes over time. So there's this language dude on Instagram that I follow. His name is Adam Alex, and he goes by the tag, the etymology nerd, and he does this video about the word gossip. He says that the word gossip actually began as a shortening of the phrase God siblings or God sibs, which were people you talked to and were close to.

And it eventually evolved into this word that we hear now, which tends to refer to idol chatter. What I find really interesting is that there's this musical called Noah's Flood by Benjamin Britton that was written in the mid 19 hundreds, and a character in this musical refers to her friends as my gossips.

So that's like a halfway language change where there's still people that you talk to, but the word has gone from being God sims to gossips. So that's like halfway between. Where it started and what we know it now. As you can tell, I get a bit nerdy about words. I have collected words since I was in high school.

I have a list on my notes, app of words that I found interesting and ones that I wanted to know the history of a couple of those words were juggernaut, perplexities, soteriology, catharsis, lugubrious, and copacetic. And there's like. A hundred more on there. 

There's this really good quote from the book that says, some words are more than letters on a page.

Don't you think they have shape and texture? They're like bullets full of energy, and when you give one breath, you can feel its sharp edge against your lips. That's such a good description. Do you have a favorite word? I do. What's your favorite word? My favorite word is figment. Those of you who know me, you've probably heard me talk about this word.

I get a bit nerdy about it because it comes from the phrase, a figment of your imagination. And one day I was just wondering, okay, I've never heard the word figment outside of the context of figment of your imagination. So I started researching it. What does the word figment mean? And I actually couldn't find a definition of the word figment other than the phrase figment of your imagination.

Eventually I did track it down. And apparently you can just use it without the phrase of your imagination because the word figment literally means a figment of your imagination. Does that make sense? 

Yeah. 

So it's like saying ATM machine where 

M stands for the machine. Yeah. Pin number. Yeah. Uh, so pretty much figment is something that is of your imagination, right?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I'm still not. At least that's what, yeah. At least that's what you've been able to track down. Hey. Yeah. Yeah. It's a cool word. Yeah. My current favorite word is bumptious. That's a very good word. Which kind of means exactly what you'd think it would mean. It means. Self-assertive or proud to an irritating degree, and this is one of those words that I feel like has that shape to it, that that quote is talking about, that it has this bullet and it's full of energy.

It's like bumptious, like that is such a bumptious person. I learned the word bumptious from the Merriam Webster dictionary because there's something you can sign up for. You can sign up for Merriam Webster's word of the day, and every day at the same time, you get an email with a word and definition.

That's where I learned bumptious. I love it. So we hear a lot, the phrase language is powerful and the pen is mightier than the sword. And why? Why? Why is that the case? Well, I 

guess it's obvious, but at the most fundamental level, words allow you to speak. Well, there's a quote, PIP Williams says, words define us.

They explain us, and on occasion they serve to control. Or isolate us. So the words which we use to describe things in 

people shape how we think about them. I mean, think about the difference between describing something as well. Someone as short versus petite both essentially mean the same thing, but they carry these different weights.

One can be used as an insult, and the other one is a compliment. 

Words 

can 

also be dangerous 

to autocratic power because they give shape to ideas. Like that phrase, give shape to ideas is pretty much spot on. Like you can have an idea and it just exists in your head, but once you can like outline it and sketch it out with words, it no longer just exists in your head and it can be shared with others.

And once an idea is put into words and shared, it can be used to fuel movements like the suffrage movement, the idea of 

sisterhood. And that's why one of the first things that autocratic governments come for is freedom of speech. Mm-hmm. Even if they're the ones yelling about freedom of speech. Yeah. If you are not allowed to criticize them without threats, then it's blatant hypocrisy and definitely not freedom of speech anymore.

Well 

saying your freedom speak as long as you don't say the things criticizing us. Is not freedom of speech. And I feel like sometimes 

these movements yell about freedom of speech as kind of like a defense against Oh, but we're pro-freedom of speech when they're, they're actually not. 

Hmm. 

Anyway, um, side note, freedom of speech is not the same thing as freedom from consequences.

If you insult someone to their face and they deck you, that's. Not a suppression of your freedom of speech, that's you facing the consequences of your words. And also that's assault. Don't do that. So once governments start banning words or phrases that criticize them, you know that you're in trouble. And note that this doesn't apply to kindness.

If there are words that are hurtful to people, it makes sense that we shouldn't use them and that we should encourage others to not use them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's not the same as they're being like legal. Consequences for using certain words. Yeah. Enforced by the government. Yeah. 

See, it's a lot easier to keep control of people if their ideas are trapped inside their heads without the words to share with others.

Once people start to share their feelings and thoughts through words, they can band together, and that can lead to regime downfall. 

So suppressing language means having power over people. 

Esme realizes early on that not all words are equal in the eyes of the publishers. And she starts gathering words dismissed by others, particularly these words used by lower class women.

Women. And, you know, she, she compiles them. They printed into this book for her, um, named Women's Words and Their Meanings, and she gives this book to the editor of the dictionary. And he refuses to accept it because it's uns scholarly and not a topic of 

importance. And I love how she responds. She says.

You are not the arbiter of knowledge, sir, you are. Its librarian. It is not for you to judge the importance of these words. Simply allow others to do so 

oof finger snaps. See, by dismissing women's words, the editor is ultimately dismissing women's lived experiences. 

But if that language is shared, then some of that power is returned to women and it gives them access.

To be able to share their stories, which is really important. It gives them the power that they may not have had before. So 

language shapes society, right? This novel tells the story of a man's history from the perspective of the women between the lines. Women at this time are restricted severely, they can't vote, and their participation in society is strictly limited.

Esme is restricted to certain roles at the Scriptorium, and she's not really taken seriously despite being the daughter of one of the editors. And Edith, her mentor, who is actually based on a real person, also plays this sidelined role, even though she's very important to the actual. Compilation of the dictionary.

So Laura Skates, who is a scholar, writes in her review of this book, the women who did contribute to the dictionary were so often cast to the sidelines. One of those women, Edith Thompson features In the story, PIP Williams used Edith's real name for her dictionary work and a made up nickname, dieta for her scenes with the fictional Esme.

In both the book and reality, Edith spent much of her life writing for the dictionary, and yet she was not invited to join the celebrations when it was finally published. Instead, Edith was only allowed to stand on the balcony and watch as the men ate. 

So the Oxford Dictionary was created by men, and though women worked all around them.

Their 

voices were not heard and their contributions were not celebrated or valued. And as Esme begins engaging with other women of different classes and different walks of life and sharing languages, she's able to articulate something really important. She says, I realized that the words most often used to define us were words that described our function in relation to others.

Even the most benign words, maiden wife. Mother told the world whether we were virgins or not. What was the male equivalent of maiden? I could not think of it. What was the male equivalent of misses of whore of common skull? Which words would define me? Which would be used to judge or contain? Oh, such a good quote.

I feel like we just need to sit on that quote for a minute and think about it because it's true. There's really no male equivalent for the word maiden or whore, or common school like that just doesn't exist. Yeah. I feel like we just need to sit with that for a 

minute. It's pretty crazy. So these are words that overlook women's experiences as human beings, their 

emotions, their experiences.

Yeah. And it defines them as their role rather than who they are as people. 

That begs the question, who decides that some words are more important than others 

and. Esme realizes this fact that some words are considered more important, and that's part of why she collects these discarded words. She collects them in order to represent the people who use these words, the poor, the outsiders in society, women, and this brings light to women's issues and things that people experienced on the streets.

These words were spoken and not really written down because they were used by these lower classes and. These people didn't always write. And so when Esme was meeting these various people, Lizzie, who was poor and working class, and Tilda, who's a suffrage at Mabel, who is a woman in the market with the most vulgar, but some of the most important words, she notices how different the language is depending on who's telling the story.

A very good example of this is in history. Take Australia for example, Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander language and culture was destroyed. Children were stolen from the land and no longer allowed to speak their own language. We've talked about how language gives power, and so when language is taken away, power is also taken away.

You know, there were hundreds of languages and dialects, pre colonization, most were destroyed. Therefore, leaving people without the language to describe their history and experiences in the context of their own culture. 

And we've talked about how language changes over generations, and that applies to when one language is blended with another and it carries the culture and experiences of the people that speak that language and engage with that language.

Yeah. A lot of languages and dialects have merged with English. Hence we get Aboriginal English versus Australian English. And you know, this is not just in Australia. There's also African American vernacular English or pigeon English in Papua New Guinea, and various Creoles across many cultures in which the English language took over.

So I have a question. What's proper English language has its rules. All languages around the world have grammatical rules that are followed and taught to children in schools, even those who complain about how English is stupid and don't follow rules. You'd be surprised at how it actually does, and even some of the things that don't make sense, like the words thorough though through and thought like those words are their own rule.

But anyways, English smashed into so many cultures and created these dialects. Who are we to say that our version of English is proper English? Language is shaped by culture, experiences, and needs. And for so many generations everyone was set on speaking the king's English with the proper accent and grammar and all that, and that totally dismisses the experiences of entire people groups.

What do you think? Yeah, I'd love to hear from you about this. I think that there's a lot that we could discuss about this, and I feel like sometimes we get really hung up about, um, who's speaking properly and who's not. When. Really, who are we to have the authority to say what is proper and what is not when it 

comes to English?

We live in a very multicultural world now, and English has always been shaped by all of these other languages, and so we need to expect that it will continue to do so as. It continues to mix with other languages in the world. 

You know, having the language to describe your experiences allows you to articulate the things that happened to you and be able to process them.

It allows you to say, this is what happened to me and this is why it was not okay. 

And language just has this power to open up so much, and that's why speaking and writing and reading to give shape to ideas is such an important part of. Having a voice in the world, and that's one really important aspect of the dictionary of lost words.

It is set against the fight for women's suffrage. And so the suffragettes, the women who worked towards women being able to vote, they used leaflets and newspapers and hand bills, so printed language. To share their ideas about why women should get the vote they had, public speaking, the soap box, if you will.

They got up on their soap boxes, and that's the literal soap boxes. That's how it got into the language. It started out because people literally stood up on soap boxes to elevate themselves up above the crowd to be able to speak. Do people know what soap boxes are nowadays? 

Do soap boxes even exist? No, I don't think they exist anymore.

They used to anyway, boxes that soap, like these little crates. Yeah. Not very big. That you 

would wooden crates that you could. You could stand bars of soap in. Yeah, in bulk. Anyway. Public speaking was a really powerful way that women shared their ideas and their beliefs and petitions, which were always tabled by the men who had the power to make this change.

Were also a really important part of this, and it's good to note that. These men who had the power, it wasn't bad that they had the power. In fact, because they had that power, they were able to help bring about this change. And so having power isn't bad. And if you find yourself in a position of power or privilege, you can use that to make a real difference.

Like the men who were in power, they opened up space for these women's petitions. Listen to our little princess episode, if you wanna hear more on that note, interestingly, the movement for women's suffrage, women's right to vote wasn't seen favorably by all. Both men and women actually pushed back, and so this is what the National Library of Australia had to say about this.

Before women were given the right to vote, many men believed that women did not want the vote and were not educated or intelligent enough to hold an opinion. Many believe that women should focus on raising children and doing housework, enabling men to decide on the policies that affected women. And today we have both men and women who are arguing, we need to go back there, that women should lose the vote anyway.

It's a whole thing online, it's a whole other conversation for another time. Anyway, so women in the suffrage movement really, you know, banded together to share their ideas and language, gave them the ability to do so, and they formed what we might call a sisterhood. So Esme connects with Tilda, who is a part of this suffrage movement and encourages her to get involved and.

Esme is afraid to pass out flyers at night and Tilda tells her The problem is, Esme, you're scared of the wrong thing without the vote, nothing we say matters, and that should terrify. You see Tilda 

and who it is she represents. Very outside the box. She's, um, through Es me's, eyes seen as very worldly and very far from the model domesticated housewife.

And she introduces Esme to a whole different world. And throughout the book, Esme Iss never truly caught up in the suffrage movement. She's a quieter voice than Tilda and her own dictionary of. Her personal dictionary of lost words is her own fight for equal representation. 

So there's different ways to stand up for what you believe.

You could say that both Tilda and Esme stood up for what they believed in, in their own way, fought for it in very different ways. Not everyone is going to be speaking out loud. Some are going to be writing or working to educate others, or just taking a quiet stand in their own life, doing what they believe is right.

Edith 

writes to Esme. Once the question of women's political suffrage has been dealt with, less obvious inequalities will need to be exposed. Without realizing it, you are already working for this cause. As Grandfather said, it will be a long game. Play a position you are good at and let others play theirs.

So suffrage was only one part of women's fight for equality, otherwise known as feminism. The official definition of feminism. Is advocacy for women's rights on the basis of equality of the sexes. And there are different waves of feminism over the last 200 or so years, and they've brought about some major changes.

Women in most Western countries can now vote and own property and do the same jobs as men. 

However, feminism has become somewhat of a dirty word. There are various ways of how feminism is viewed today. There are a lot of misconceptions, people. Women often say 

that they're not feminists. There's this whole trend online of videos of girls saying, I'm not a feminist.

I can actually cook. I'm not a feminist. I can wear a dress and feel pretty. It's not about dresses and feeling pretty and cooking. It's about freedom and equality and being able to make choices about your own life. 

There's 

this 

misconception that feminism has gone too far and that we already have equality.

But there are growing voices calling for the vote to be taken away from women and shut women out of public life. 

In Australia, at least women still tend to retire with 25% less superannuation than men, and there's still a huge amount of harassment directed at women in male dominated fields. 

I will say there are people who do take feminism too far.

End up turning around and 

hating on men, and it's no longer about equality. It's about trying to elevate women above men and almost revenge, but that's not what feminism is. Truly or should truly be about. And that is actually not helpful to anybody. No, it's not helpful. And you know, authoritarian regimes all over the world are restricting women's rights in various ways.

We are lucky to be in a western country where we can even make a podcast because, and put it on the internet because there's many countries in which, because we are women, we wouldn't be allowed to do that. Mm-hmm. Um, so I think it's really important that we continue having these conversations about women's equality in the world because it's so easy.

To go backwards and take for granted where we are today. And I think it's important that we continue to support equality between all people because all people in the world have basic human value and should be treated equally. And a great example of this was Gareth, who was Es MA's fiance. He saw her and he valued her opinion and he supported her in collecting all of her words.

He's the one who bound them together for her in a book and printed it for her. And it started with a genuine care for her as a human being and valuing her as an equal. So what does it look like to support women or other groups that are pushed aside and held back by society? 

I think it starts when we take the time to listen and truly see the experience of someone else.

Instead of taking someone's experience as an attack on you to try and understand what their experience has been, try to put yourself in their shoes. 

Like, how would I feel if I were in this situation? What would I need from somebody listening? You can be that person. 

I think this is why empathy is sometimes villainized by authoritarian systems.

If you genuinely encounter another person's story and feel what it's like to be them, that can take apart your understanding of things, which can be dangerous for those systems as they rely on you being super rigid in the views that you hold. 

And I think it's also really important that you don't be afraid to change your mind.

It's a sign of intelligence to be able to change your mind when presented with new evidence. And I think that being able to keep your mind flexible to new ideas is really important. And I think it's also really important to ask yourself, how many of your own beliefs do you think are actually true? And how important is it to you that they are true?

For me, it's really important that. The views that I hold are true. And so I try to work through what I believe and refine them and make sure that they are actually true. And honestly, I'm sure that there are views that I have that aren't true. I would hope that at least 80% of what I believe is true, but I would not have the confidence to say everything that I believe is true.

And I think 

that that's important. And honestly, it's confronting to come up with. An opposing opinion, which makes you question your own ideas that you hold because people hold their ideas and views very closely and it's kind of like it's a part of who you are, part of your identity, and so challenging your own opinions can 

be quite scary.

I also think that sometimes there's this idea that if one of your beliefs. Comes undone, the rest of your beliefs will fall down like a Jenga tower. And I think that people are really afraid of that. And I don't think it actually works like that. And what, it's a lot, it's a lot more nuanced and what's important that even if your Jenga tower falls down, you can rebuild it in a stronger way.

Yeah. I feel like that's happened to me with a lot of the things that I believe. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I feel I was afraid for a long time to question what I believed because I thought that, you know, taking out that one pin would bring everything down and you know, sometimes that does happen, but. You can rebuild better and stronger and more durable.

Anyway, another really important thing to do in order to facilitate this process is to learn. There is so much history behind the issues that are happening today. The things that we encounter today don't just spawn out of thin air. They, there's this whole context and history behind the things that.

Going on today that I think is really important to know. Women's suffrage was really only the beginning of the fight for equality in Australia. Women couldn't open bank accounts without the permission or co-signing of a male relative or spouse until like the 1970s. That was just like 50 years ago.

That's like our parents' generation. Yeah. When they were kids. That, that's crazy to me. That's one generation. And so issues of women's equality are ongoing and understanding the history and trajectory is super important. I mean, think about women in places like Afghanistan where they're not allowed to go to school, they can't speak to other women in public.

They're completely silenced. And 

you know, sometimes we feel powerless when we come up with ideas like this. What are we supposed to do? One thing that we both think is super important is reading this book itself was great for that. Like I wouldn't have known anything about the writing of the dictionary without it, and I learned a lot about the history of the suffrage movement as well.

And there's so much in the world that simply cannot be expressed in a one minute video on TikTok or even a two hour video essay on YouTube. 

It's also really good to read authors different from yourself with different backgrounds and different experiences, and I think that that's something I struggle with.

I think that it's just a natural thing. We tend to gravitate towards people who are like us, and so being intentional about engaging with voices that are different to us is super important. And reading stories about other people's experiences from a different background has really opened up my idea of what it's like for others with those experiences that are different to my own.

I think it can be confronting to read stories of other people's other cultures pain when you yourself have not gone through that same pain. But allowing yourself to go through that and sitting in that discomfort can really help broaden your worldview and help you understand the experiences of other people.

You know, ultimately leading to empathy and feeling what it's like to be in their shoes, for example. I actually really like reading authors. Who are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander because I feel like it gives me a little glimpse into their world, which really the life that I live, I have not much to do with.

And I think it's really cool because sometimes now in bookstores, there are actually shelves that celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors. And so yeah, check those out. Another thing that you can do to support. Equality and giving language to people who may not have had it, is to share the ideas with others.

Um, Esme wasn't like Tilda, she wasn't able to get out there and speak loudly and whatnot, but she did what she was able to do and she was a supporter in her own way. And we can do this too. And that can mean things like sharing resources, like posting on your Instagram story or sending things to friends or recommending books or saying, Hey, let's watch this movie.

You can also. Talk to the people around you. Asking questions is a really good way to untangle big issues and suggesting ideas is also really useful. There are ideas that were suggested to me close to 10 years ago, and only recently have I actually adopted them and thought, yeah, actually that's a good idea.

Finding communities also really important. Edith and Tilda were community for Esme. They encouraged her and helped her to move forward and had her back when things got tough. 

I think it's important to remember that you can't fix the whole world, but you can make a small difference, which can cause a chain reaction.

There's this great quote from Pinterest, well from Tumblr that made its way onto Pinterest, and I actually, I have this, I had this board many years ago that I called life changes, and this is one of the pins that was on there. The first person goes, I'm upset because I want to change the world, but the world is too big and people are too mean, and somebody else comes in and.

Shares a quote by Rabbi Taron. And it's Don't be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now? Love mercy. Now walk humbly. Now, you are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. 

And on that note. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Literary Lamppost.

Join us on Instagram and share your thoughts with us. We'd love to hear what you think. Also share this podcast with someone you think would enjoy it and stay tuned for our next episode in which we will be talking about, 

I. 

The murmur of bees. 

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Absolutely. Thank you so much for listening and see you next time. This podcast includes brief excerpts from literary works for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and analysis, which we believe constitutes fair use under copyright law. Our theme music was created by Joshua Ibit at Doppler Music for exclusive use by the Literary Liberals podcast.

I've got this by memory guys.