THE DICTIONARY PEOPLE by Sarah Ogilvie is a non-fictional account regarding the development of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The development of the OED spanned the period from 1858 to 1928. This descriptive dictionary was different than earlier prescriptive dictionaries, which narrowly specified the usage of words. Instead the OED tracked the changes in the usage of words from the first known origin through the intervening history and up to the current time. 

 It was a huge project that involved more than 3,000 unpaid volunteer readers throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. These readers were instructed to find all words no matter how rare, unusual, or even archaic. They were required to write on paper slips quotations using the subject word and details of the source. Millions of these slips were mailed to the editor for review, editing, and inclusion. 

The book also describes the various readers and some of the unusual words included in the OED. This book is recommended for those readers, who can trudge through voluminous details of OED history.