Feminist historiography and English lexicography: recovering nineteenth-century women’s medical dictionaries

The official history of English lexicography, as so many other disciplines, has always been a predominantly masculine preserve which has tended to eclipse women’s actual contribution in dictionary-making. However, the practice of feminist historiography aims at recovering women’s roles from the past also by exposing deficiencies made from ‘the top’ and by simultaneously decentring the male subject. Thus, for example, by including the category of women in the historical reconstruction of English lexicography, it is possible to address silences, challenge absences, and, at the same time, expose relations of exploitation, domination, censorship, and erasure. This paper proposes an investigation into a specific sub-category of English language reference works produced in the nineteenth century, that is, medical dictionaries. Though these included terminology traditionally associated with masculinised professions, we will look at examples compiled by women, namely Violet Honnor Morten’s Nurse’s Dictionary of Medical Terms and Nursing Treatment (1891), Jessie Anne Fowler’s Phrenological Dictionary (1894), and Emily Marjory Armstrong Stoney’s Practical Materia Medica for Nurses (1899). By considering similarities, differences, and main features of this genre, it will be possible to (at least partially) rewrite a significant part of lexicographical historiography which will include women’s contribution to the dissemination of medical knowledge through reference works, and to present new possibilities for further research within nineteenth-century studies.