The Bookbinder

In this latest book from the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese's Book Club selection The Dictionary of Lost Words, a young British lady working in a book bindery has the opportunity to seek knowledge and love until World War I upends her life.

"With The Dictionary of Lost Words, Williams masterfully transports us to the Oxford she so vividly depicted, weaving an engrossing and captivating story."—Paula McLain, The Paris Wife author

In 1914, women are required to govern the country while the young men of Britain are called to fight elsewhere. Among such ladies are the twin sisters Peggy and Maude, who work in the university press's bindery and reside aboard a small boat in Oxford.

Peggy, an aspirational and intelligent woman, has been told her entire life that her responsibility is to bind books, not to read them. However, as she gathers and folds pages, her thoughts stray to the other side of Walton Street, where a library is available to the female students of Oxford's Somerville College. While all of this is going on, Maude is content to spend her days folding book pages among the other bindery ladies. She is amazing, but she is also fragile, and Peggy is drawn to keep an eye on her.

The sisters' lives and the Oxford community are affected when refugees from Belgium's war-torn towns arrive. Peggy starts to recognize that there could be another chance for her to get an education and use her brain instead of her hands. Her love for a Belgian soldier and the responsibilities that entails threaten to keep her back, however, as sickness and conflict transform her life.

A narrative about knowledge, who produces it, who may use it, and what facts are lost in the process is told in The Bookbinder. Similar to her work on the global blockbuster The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams painstakingly examines another little-known period of history as viewed through the perspective of women.