Two trailblazing lesbian poets, Karl Marx's daughter and a recluse with a passion for The Courier-Mail.
They're just some of the fascinating people who contributed to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
But until recently, after a chance finding by Sarah Ogilvie, a former editor of the OED, many of their identities remained a secret.
There were 3,000 mysterious contributors. So who were they — and why can so many OED entries be traced back to a Queensland newspaper?
'Wikipedia of the 19th Century'
Dr Ogilvie, who is also a research fellow in linguistics at Oxford University, calls the OED the "great crowdsourcing project" of the late 1800s.
"It was the Wikipedia of the 19th century," she tells ABC RN's Sunday Extra.
The first edition of the dictionary was funded by Oxford University Press in the 1870s and was an enormous undertaking. In fact, it took 10 years to get from the start of the letter A to 'ant'.
Pip Williams, author of The Dictionary of Lost Words, a novel about the origins of the OED, has said compiling the dictionary was "akin to mapping the human genome".
Given the size of the task, the dictionary's first substantial editor, former school teacher James Murray, issued a public call-out to help.
Volunteers from around the globe then sent in "slips" with examples of how different words were used in magazines, journals, books or newspapers.
"But until eight years ago, we never knew who all those people were," Dr Ogilvie says.
That was until she found herself in the basement of Oxford University Press, where the dictionary archive is stored, and she stumbled across Murray's old address book.
He had painstakingly catalogued contact details for the 3,000 people from all over the world who contributed to the dictionary, including which items they had sent in and more.
The discovery inspired Dr Ogilvie to research each of the contributors, a years' long project culminating in the publication of her latest book, The Dictionary People.
"I think of them as the unsung heroes of the Oxford English Dictionary," she says.
"They did this job for free, they volunteered their time. And without them, the dictionary, frankly, would never have existed."
'Brilliant' women not acknowledged
From the moment Dr Ogilvie found James Murray's address book, she had a burning question: how many women had contributed to the OED?
Of the 3,000 contributors, only 234 women had previously been acknowledged.
But the address book revealed that the number was in fact much higher, at nearly 500.
Among them were the critically acclaimed poets, lesbian couple Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who published poetry under the male pseudonym Michael Field.
Dr Ogilvie explains in her book that, as Field, the pair received high praise in English newspaper The Spectator and were likened by one critic to Shakespeare.
Ms Bradley and Ms Cooper's contributions to the OED included 500 slips from their friend and poet Robert Browning's Dramatic Idyls, and 750 slips from Homer's Iliad.
Other women contributors included the Brown sisters — Elizabeth, a self-taught astronomer, and author Jemima — who between them contributed 16,000 slips.
"These women were denied access to universities at the time," Dr Ogilvie says.
"But of course they were brilliant, and wanted to use their minds. This was a terrific way for them to do that."
One woman who receives less praise in The Dictionary People is Karl Marx's daughter, Eleanor.
She is included in Dr Ogilvie's chapter H for Hopeless Contributors, where she writes that Marx contributed 144 entries in 1881. She believed, incorrectly, that she would be paid for her work, which Mr Murray claimed was "close to useless".
Finally given credit
Women like Bradley, Cooper and many others have long gone unacknowledged for their work in establishing the OED.
In 1928, a celebratory dinner was held in London to commemorate the "completion" of the dictionary, at 400,000 words and 15,000 pages.
The event, which took place at Goldsmiths' Hall, seated 150 men in black tie. The then-UK Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin gave a speech.
Dr Ogilvie writes that of the "dictionary people" (those who had contributed listings) invited to the event, just three were women.
They sat in silence during proceedings and "were not allowed to sit at the table with men".
Their exclusion was a key motivation for Dr Ogilvie putting together her book.
"I really wanted to shine a light on these women, and give them credit finally," she says.
One man, 100,000 slips and The Courier-Mail
Although the OED now employs 75 people who work on the dictionary daily, it still relies on crowdsourcing.
Among the contemporary contributors was a particularly dedicated Brisbane enthusiast named Chris Collier.
Dr Ogilvie found around 200 Australians who sent slips to the OED, but Mr Collier's contribution was among the most substantial.
Over three decades, he sent in as many as 100,000 words, all from a single source: Queensland newspaper The Courier-Mail.
"He would send in a bundle of slips that were eccentrically wrapped in cornflake packet boxes, with bits of dog hair stuck on them," Dr Ogilvie says.
The nightly habit of collecting quotations started in 1975, after he read an article in the same paper asking for public contributions, and continued until he died in 2010.
In 2006, Dr Ogilvie organised to meet with Mr Collier, in what he called his "office": a park behind his local pub.
"He was a terrific, eccentric person," she says.
She asked if he would accept a paid flight to Oxford to recognise the extent of his contributions.
"He thought about the offer for a second, but then said, 'Oh, I couldn't possibly. Just imagine all the Courier-Mails waiting for me when I got home'."
What Mr Collier didn't know was that Dr Ogilvie had kickstarted a process to have him recognised with an Order of Australia, but he died before it could be completed.
His legacy, however, lives on in a statistical quirk.
The OED now contains more quotations from The Courier-Mail than Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot or the Book of Common Prayer.
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