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Help the OED Find a Lost Book
New submitter imlepid writes "The Oxford English Dictionary is currently undergoing a complete overhaul which includes a reexamination of the 300,000+ entries and citations for those entries. Understandably for a work which is over 150 years old, some of the sources have become hard to find. One such example is a book titled 'Meanderings of Memory' by Nightlark, which is cited 49 times in the OED, including for some rare words. The OED's editorial team has appealed to the public, 'Have you seen a copy of this book?'"
"But Mr Dent, Meanderings of Memory has been available in the local library for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see it, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the book was on display ..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find it."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the book didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."
They can't remember where they left the 'Meanderings of Memory' book?
Bark less. Wag more.
check the comments under the OED blog - there's a link to a catalog on google books which lists it
A famous literary hoax, of Borgesian dimensions.
One might adduce as much, from the enigmatic title of the purported work, and the pseudonymous attribution of authorship.
In fact, this was the product of several Oxford dons, in the generation before Tolkien - who expanded on the academic chicanery of spurious reference work by creating an entire cosmos, populated with libraries of such.
Now, let us turn to the Voynich manuscript, and the Dictionary of the Khazars...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."