Review -The Man Who Made Lists by Joshua Kendall
Biography of Roget's Thesaurus Author Peter Mark Roget
Joshua Kendall, the author of The Man Who Made Lists, is a freelance journalist and author specializing in psychological issues. The co-author of three academic psychology books and numerous articles, Kendall has won awards from the National Mental Health Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association for his insightful writing on the subject.
What then, could a psychological writer bring to the biography of an 18th century reference book author? Plenty. Kendall makes a strong case for the notion that it was deep psychological trauma, suffered at a young age by Peter Mark Roget, that was inevitably responsible for one of our most respected, long-lived and useful reference tools: Roget's Thesaurus.
Young Roget Suffered Much Trauma
Roget, a British subject, lived 90 years, from 1779 to 1869. But by his mid-teens, young Roget had already suffered much tragedy. His mother had gone mad, his father died young, his beloved uncle committed suicide, dying in his arms, and the boy was moved from place to place. Kendall contends that, in an effort to bring some order to his life, young Roget made lists and categorized them.
Long before the publication of his thesaurus (which was just a "project" in his mind) Roget had many successes, among them: he graduated from Edinburgh University as a physician, was a successful academic physiologist, lectured and published papers on his discoveries, including new tests for arsenic poisoning and the idea that the retina sees still images in series as a continuous scene.
Peter Mark Roget, though he spent days writing and studying in seclusion, was also a fairly social man. He counted among his acquaintances Wordsworth and Coleridge, two renowned poets of the day. Kendall also suggests that Roget was a bit of a lady's man.
Roget's Thesaurus Not Just A Book of Synonyms
As to Roget's Thesaurus itself, Kendall makes a point of establishing the fact that it is not simply a "book of synonyms." "Thesaurus" is Latin for "Treasury"; to Roget it was a "compendium of thematically arranged concepts under one cover." His idea was to break down everything in known existence into 1000 categories, then further sub-dividing them, until virtually all things had their place. In fact, the first entry in the first edition was titled "existence."
Clearly, the thesaurus was quite an undertaking. Using the lists he'd been making since age 5 or so, along with the results of prodigious study, Roget completed his first draft at age 26. It wasn't until after his retirement, however, at age 69, that Roget got back to work on the project, finally publishing the 1st edition after four more years of work.
Now That's A Title!
The title of that first edition was Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged So As to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition.It was only an afterthought, Roget's decision shortly before publication to insert an alphabetical index as an appendix, that allows us to use this now-infamous reference as a conventional book of synonyms.
Joshua Kendall's The Man Who Made Lists presents all of this, and much more in a highly readable, entertaining biography, recommended for "wordies", or anyone interested in the background of someone who helped shape our lives today.
Kendall, Joshua. The Man Who Made Lists. 2008,Putnam, New York,297pgs. (isbn: 978-0-399-15462-1)
The Man Who Made Lists by Joshua Kendall
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