The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus

by Joshua Kendall

A profile of the creator of the legendary thesaurus named for him describes his childhood fascination with list-making, a practice that was shaped by family tragedies, his run-in with Napoleon's authorities, and a productive relationship with famed physician Thomas Beddoes. 50,000 first printing.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Language, Books About Books, Biography Memoir, Audiobook

297 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did you know that Peter M. Roget invented the slide rule as well as creating the book that is synonymous with synonyms?

He lost his father at five. His mother was overprotective and bat-shit crazy. Roget was an emotional wreck who forwent participation in society in favor of observing, listing, and organizing things.

Kendall crafts a highly readable narrative.

“Unlike Girard and his successors, Roget aimed not to explain or prescribe the use of the words. Rather, he felt he just needed to list all the options.”

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

*****3.5*****

Kendall states in his Acknowledgements that "this book was not meant to be a scholarly biography." The book isn't an authority on Roget but instead talks about Roget's mania with making lists (see title) and why and how making lists helped him escape the fate of his mother, sister, uncle, and numerous other relatives of descending into mental health breakdowns despite the losses and difficulties he suffered.
I enjoyed reading about Peter Roget, a man whose last name is definitely familiar to me as a writer and as an English major, but about whom I knew nothing otherwise. The book isn't a page-turner, it's not exactly riveting, but it held my interest, and Kendall's perspective made me feel for Roget and his family and everything they went through. Each member of the family seemed to suffer tragedy after tragedy, and it really is remarkable that Roget fought his way out of depression and kept his anxiety at bay, managing to live until 91 years old, in good health, still hiking and studying, his mind and body still sharp. I liked reading about his academic pursuits and the backdrop of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Academia and the path of science were largely in flux then, so it's always been an interesting time period for me with Humphry Davies (sp) and his inhalation of gases and Darwin's work and the medical field progressing rapidly with new discoveries and innovations all the time in various fields. I enjoyed reading about Roget's place in all that as a doctor and with his work with words.
The book is 3.5 stars for me because I liked it a lot, but the pace was slow sometimes, and it felt repetitive in the beginning. I also felt that Kendall overplayed the reasoning behind a lot of Roget's actions being his mother's overbearing nature. Roget's earlier years obviously contributed to the Thesaurus in specific ways, and Kendall does a great job of illustrating that impact, but there were pieces of information that didn't need to be included to support his thesis, which is essentially that making lists saved Roget from giving into his mental health struggles. His mother couldn't fight past them, his sister couldn't, his grandmother couldn't, his beloved uncle committed suicide, yet Roget found something that kept him grounded, that focused his thoughts, and making lists saved his mind if not his life. In that vein, some of the early details are more forced into Kendall's argument than supportive of it. Once we get past Roget's earliest years, though, I don't feel Kendall pushed that narrative about Roget's overbearing mother anymore.
Overall, this book contains a great slice of microhistory. We learn about Roget and his masterpiece, but we also learn about the time period, about Manchester and the Royal Society, about Victorian life, various other society characters, like a man who dressed up his cats in fancy clothes and had them sit at the table with him... So, I recommend this book if you want to know more about the time period filtered through Roget's life, movements, and contacts, and if you've ever used Roget's Thesaurus and want to know how and why it was written. The book gives a great overview of Roget's life and the surrounding history, and it also provides an interesting insight into how one obsession can actually save a person's life and make them stronger in surprising ways.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I hadn't just read The Last Man Who Knew Everything Thomas Young, The Anonymous Polymath Who Proved Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured the Sick, and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Among Other Feats of Genius, this book would have been more impressive.

As it was, both authors wrote books about British polymaths who were doctors, made breakthroughs in their medical fields, made contributions to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and were linguistic pioneers. Of the two, however, Thomas Young seemed to be more worthy of the title "polymath".

Kendall's book about Peter Mark Roget, best known as the creator of Roget's Thesaurus, is an awkward, choppy read. The book has a non-linear chain of events with a very linear plot style, which makes it difficult to parse through. Roget himself was a difficult, complicated man, and while Kendall tries extremely hard to make him a sympathetic character, he's ultimately unsuccessful.

It's clear that Kendall has a tremendous amount of appreciation for Roget; unfortunately, he didn't convince me why that appreciation was warranted.

Having said this, though, this is definitely a book that I'd like to re-read in a few years *without* having read Robinson's book. I have to admit that my review of Kendall's book was definitely influenced by having first read the biography of Young.

[ValeReads Kyriosity · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a confession to make: I've never liked Roget's Thesaurus. The organization by categories rather than by simple alphabetization was never intuitive to me. But my criticism is not as extreme as that of Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman, who lays the blame for the demise of intellectual acuity in the English-speaking world at Roget's feet. That's just silly. Stupid people will, of course, use such tools stupidly, but intelligent people will use them intelligently. (And people of any level of learning who learn and grow from using them would fall in the intelligent category.)

The Visual Thesaurus is the most useful and delightful entry into the genre that I've yet discovered. And here's another confession: I use it most often when I'm attempting to compose lighthearted alliteration. Really, the personal computer and the internet are tools that have been able to fulfill the potential of the concept of a thesaurus far better than any printed book could have, and I'm grateful to live in the age when they are available.

Anyhoo...about the book. I'm not quite sure what I think about Roget. He was certainly brilliant (he also invented the slide rule!), but his personality quirks were a bit much to take. The author asserts (but offers no evidence) that Roget made his children's governess his mistress and apparently never repented of it. But that doesn't quite gibe with his otherwise fairly consistent religious beliefs. Kendall had made a point of noting that Roget was no fan of the casual fornication common among his class during the Regency period, so why would he so heedlessly have embraced gross sexual immorality later in life? He was a widower, so there was no apparent reason he couldn't have married her. And she was of childbearing age, so there's no apparent reason she would have consented to such a relationship at the risk of her integrity and security. It just seemed like an inexplicable anomaly based on sheer conjecture...and perhaps some gossip gleaned somewhere. I did like the info about his contribution to the Bridgewater Treatises, an eight-volume natural history series commissioned to expound on "the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation" and his later opposition to Darwin. Kendall, of course, found this to be a flaw.

The most exciting episode in Roget's life was a rather suspenseful escape from France under threat of long imprisonment (it was a Napoleon thing). The most boring passage in the book was Kendall's unnecessarily long tangent on the feeeeeeeelings of a girl he didn't end up marrying. The saddest was the death of his wife. The most vexing was some opposition by professional detractors later in Roget's life which, from where I sit, seemed more the result of envy than any substantial failings on his part.

The reader was good (very similar to Simon Vance) though he whiffed a few pronunciations.

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Peter Roget might be my historical soulmate. His biographer, though, is a little over-assiduous in emphasizing the OCD theme, so much so that when the reader finally reaches the publication of thesaurus it's regrettably anticlimactic. The transitions from straight fact to imagined dialogue are almost excessively awkward. However, fun to read about the role model for list-makers everywhere.

[Dee Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audible sale (#8 of 40) 8 hours 58 min. Narrated by Stephen Hoye (A)

This author 's book could have used a good editor to pare down the repetitive sections. Good research on the interesting life of Peter Mark Roget, but the author delves into psycho-analysis without credibility. The title needs to have the words Love, Death, and Madness deleted. Interesting reading otherwise. I never knew that Napoleon declared Britains over age 18 and living on the continent to be arrested and not released until after the war. No wonder the Duke of Wellington was Roget's hero!

[DelGal · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read the review in "BookPage" and was definitely intrigued by the title, but unfortunately this is the only good thing about the book - eye catching title.
I attempted to stick through this book but it got drier and more confusing as I read on, so I gave up.
Sorry Roget, I hope at least you liked the book about your life, and you're not turning over in your grave!

[Catherine Alber · Rating 2 out of 5]

Writing is redundant and pedestrian which is a shame, because the story of Peter Roget and his Thesaurus is fascinating and the research is good.

[Jane]

I skipped around a lot. I kept thinking "if he was in a public school today, he'd be on the Autism Spectrum".

[Abigail Padgett · Rating 3 out of 5]

An idiosyncratic biography of Peter Mark Roget, the creator of the thesaurus that has, in various editions, never been far from my typewriter, later my computer. The cord to my mouse trails across the Harper and Row 4th Edition right now, although I love the old editions for their elegant, half-forgotten words. If I could have but one book on the proverbial desert island, it would be an unabridged Roget’s including every word since the first edition. When finally rescued, I’d sound like William Buckley.

Lists, however, is less about words than about 19th century British men of letters. Kendall places Roget in such a well-detailed historical milieu, particularly in regard to the many accomplishments of Roget’s male relatives and other prominent men with whom Roget actually had little or no contact, that I found myself skipping whole pages, eager to get on to something about Roget himself, the thesaurus, and words.

And then there’s the “madness” thing, drawn with a not-so-subtle misogyny. Suicides by men with impressive careers abound in Kendall’s narrative, but are never the result of “madness.” Roget’s mother, however, despite raising three children as a widow in an era during which widows were socially invisible pariahs, is described throughout as a neurotic control-freak whose final years as a “madwoman” wandering the streets of a coastal village where she lived with Roget’s sister are only what she deserved. (Why is walking around in a resort town “mad,�� and why is no information given about this woman that might more thoughtfully account for her scantily-described behavior?) Roget’s sister is also psychiatrically defined, a “depressive.” (Jilted by her great love, a lifelong “old maid” in a time when there was no viable option for women but marriage, and burdened with the care of an (apparently) ill and aging mother, who wouldn’t be depressed? But “mad?” No.)

Kendall’s careful attention to Roget’s strange, list-making personality, and indeed to the “personality” of the time (as exemplified by the interests and pursuits of highly-educated men), is thorough and impressive, however. Their intellectual world and Roget’s come to life in this work with unsurpassed clarity, and for that reason it’s definitely worth reading.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scratch "Love" out of the subtitle for this book; there wasn't any. Tons of madness, though, and slightly more death than I really wanted, but hell, it's the 19th Century, people die.

In the spirit of making lists, here's mine:
1. Roget's mother might have been overbearing, but the author seems to really hate her. That turned me off.
2. Okay, so it's not a scholarly biography, I know, but please don't write Roget's internal monologue. Or do, but then make it a play or film script or something.
3. I guess I would have been happier with a book about the Thesaurus, because the bits about that were my favorite.
4. I wasn't expecting Napoleon! What a cameo! And Beau Brummell? More Regency Dandyism, please. Sticking Darwin in there was too much, though. A bit like one of those Monty Python animations... Darwin popping up in the corner of the screen...

[Carleen Huxley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like many others reviewing here, I didn't actually finishing reading this book. I have a 150 page rule. If I'm not captivated by 150 pages then reading becomes homework not pleasure. I gave it three stars because someone who is interested in Roget, the time period he was functioning in, his contempories, and even the history of natural science would probably find this book pretty interesting. Roget had a compulsive personality but managed to use what could have been a disabling trait to his and in the end everyone's advantage by creating lists, lists which would subsequently become that crucial resource we've all learned to rely on, the thesaurus. Although I may not have enjoyed this read, the information provides a deep look into a not well know part of history.

[Rhonda Hankins]

fun read of quite a weird guy who lived quite an interesting life in interesing places during interesting times despite himself.

i don't know if roget despised his mother or not, but the author of this book certainly hated roget's mother and his insistence on emphasizing all the mother's irritating habits is either amusing or annoying, not sure which, but in any event produced a son with odd habits.

[Sandra D · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just passed page 100 and I'm not enjoying this at all. It's very, very dry.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite as good as The Professor and the Madman, but still quite an interesting read.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly enjoyable read about Peter Roget, inventor of the "Thesaurus". He also pioneered the invention of the slide rule. Not the happiest, healthiest guy on the planet but hard-working and brilliant in many ways. I didn't find this book dry reading at all and may even read it again someday.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a child I had, and consulted, a paperback version of Roget's Thesaurus, and found it to be immensely helpful in building the sort of vocabulary I have and the ability to find le mot juste in my speaking and writing.  Nor, based on this book, am I the only one who has that particular habit, although the age of the internet has meant that I no longer have a hard copy of the thesaurus but rather use its virtual equivalents.  It is somewhat telling that Simon Winchester, noted for his fondness for the Oxford English Dictionary despite the quirkiness and lack of scientific rigor in its ambition to define every word, has such a marked distaste for Roget's Thesaurus despite its rather similarly cosmic aim to provide equivalences between words to improve the linguistic capacity of its readers, largely on account of the way that the Thesaurus can be abused by inexpert writers.  Given that the author seems to have specialized in writing about the relationship between creativity and innovation on the one hand and mental illness on the other, this book seems to be right up his alley, and mine, for that matter.

In this book of almost 300 pages we read comparatively little about the development of the Thesaurus itself.  What we do get instead is a great deal of the context of the Thesaurus, and that is a fascinating if rather dark story in its own right.  Peter Mark Roget was born of a Swiss father (who died rather early in his life) and a somewhat obsessive mother who long struggled with mental illness, and it is little surprise that the awkward and intelligent but deeply melancholic Roget would struggle to understand the world around him and the people in it.  Roget lived a dramatic life, having a wife who died young of cancer, a lengthy and somewhat disreputable relationship with a partner who posed as his daughter's governess, and quite a lot of his relatives suffered very seriously from mental illness, including an uncle who committed suicide under Roget's care (for he was a medical doctor among his many pursuits), his sister, as well as his daughter (who appears, understandably enough, to have resented her father taking up with her governess and keeping it on the down low).  And it was only late in life, when similar and inferior efforts at word lists were being touted, that Roget's masterpiece of eccentric categorization even managed to be published at all, to the benefit of generations of creative writers.

The author really spends a lot of time digging deeply into the legacy of mental illness that the Roget family and its related clans (like the Romillys, the family of Roget's mother), and demonstrates that Roget's polymath achievements carried with them less than pleasant results.  Roget shows himself to be rather anal-retentive, extremely fussy, and to have the very praiseworthy quality of being religious and greatly opposed to evolutionary folly.  I did not expect the portrayal of Roget to be so Nathanish, with his long period of singleness, his tendency towards having a great deal of warm friendships with women, and his tendency to divide places into "beautiful" and "not beautiful," which I found endearingly quirky.  This book is evidence, if more evidence is necessary, that creative people are often similar in eccentric ways, from the troubles of their own childhood to the way that they use their mental gifts as a way of overcoming serious difficulties that threaten to bring them down.  If this book is not a straightforward scholarly biography, it certainly provides a compelling picture of a very interesting man to whom I am at least very ready to give a great deal of empathetic concern.

[Bookmarks Magazine]

The title tells all: rather than a discussion of etymology, The Man Who Made Lists examines Dr. Roget and his creation through a psychological lens. Critics couldn't help but compare the effort to Simon Winchester's acclaimed The Professor and the Madman (2001), about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Incidentally, in the Atlantic, Winchester criticized Roget's Thesaurus for fostering "poor writing" in its indiscriminate cataloging. While even those reviewers who agreed with Winchester's assessment acknowledged the value of Kendall's subject matter, they diverged on its execution. A few thought the book well-written, a fine balance between historical research and novelistic flourishes. Others found forced dialogue and scenes, slack narrative, and factual errors. Still, The Man Who Made Lists is a fascinating look at a man, an era, and a now-iconic book.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Daniel Freedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting account of Peter Roget the creator of Roget's Thesaurus. This was his most famous work still in use today, but he was responsible for many other important inventions including a table of logs that greatly extended the use of the slide rule, and observations on the nature of motion and the eye that led to the first zoetrope motion pictures.
Roget used lists an analysis as a method for girding himself from the difficulties of the world around him. He was Swiss and had a very analytical mind that was almost incapable of experiencing some ordinary pleasures. Like his reaction to laughing gas which wasvery averse.
He also made many contributions to medicine and his Bridgewater teatise was very popular. Back than pneumatic medicine was all the rage and he had a brief apprentiship with the great chemist Humphrey Davies.
All in all this is a well written biography and glimpse into life in the 19th century.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subtitle of this biography promises a lot of excitement, and the opening sequence seems to deliver. The book opens with a the harrowing tale of the death of Roget's uncle, told with an immediacy that the rest of the book unfortunately lacks. Perhaps it's because I find Roget to be a bit of a snob, perhaps it's because I find his lack of social skills annoying, or perhaps he just didn't have that interesting of a life-- in any case this book didn't really hold my interest or provide much enjoyment. I'd recommend_The Professor and the Madman_, a book about the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester instead.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Today we usually know this man only from the fact that he published a book, still in print today, call "Roget's Thesaurus". That this man created this book is almost a given. He spent his entire life making lists. The thesaurus was just one facet of this habit (or compulsion).

He lived a rather interesting and colorful life. Mostly centered around scientists and scientific (or mathematic) endeavors. But his lasting contribution is in language/composition.

It's a story that takes a little-known figure and reminds us of where much of what is taken for granted comes from: the minds of extra-ordinary people from years past. Read it for yourself and be amazed.

[Brenda]

From the book:

"We seek in vain the words we need, and strive ineffectually to devise forms of expression which shall faithfully portray our thoughts and sentiments. The appropriate terms, not withstanding our utmost efforts, cannot be conjured up at will. Like "spirits from the vasty deep," they come not when we call: and we are driven to the employment of a set of words and phrases either too general or too limited, too strong or too feeble, which suit not the occasion, which hit not the mark we aim at."

[Stacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating biography of the Roget who created Roget's Thesaurus. I learned a lot about his motivations, pet peeves in life, and the intellectual climate of the time in England. I'm glad I picked this one up at the library. I'm finding that I enjoy reading about intelligent, but odd figures in intellectual history.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Completely readable biography of Peter Mark Roget. I didn't really realize how much of a polymath he was, and I did enjoy the book. However, the use of quotes when discussing interactions that the author had no way of verifying (mental "Roget thought..." and interactions with his children as examples) made this a difficult book to take as an authoritative source.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would've liked to have seen more about the Thesaurus itself. Instead, it mostly reads like a laundry list of major events in Roget's life. That, in itself, wouldn't have been so bad if Roget was a more interesting person, or had opened himself up more to historians.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd never thought about Roget as a person before, just part of the title of his thesaurus. While learning a little about him was interesting, it didn't keep my interest to finish the book.

[Michael]

After the introduction, which was entirely unobjectionable, I felt like I knew all I needed to know about Roget and his Thesaurus.

[Leticia Supple · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, so the finish date is a lie. I haven't finished this book, and I won't finish this book.

I came to be in possession of this work after spying it in The Book Grocer in Melbourne city. It seemed like an amazing kind of story, especially for one like me who sets great value by Roget's Thesaurus. The Thesaurus itself is tricky to learn to use well, but once learned, it is one of the most remarkable resources for any user of English.

It promised a lot; or rather, the testimonials on the cover did. It was apparently a "fascinating account". It was to be "full of drama". It was to be a "thorough explanation of an author's life and mind".

So it may be, if by thorough account you mean an ability to string a sequence of events together. And if by life and mind you mean relying on journals and letters.

In no way is this much more than a chronology, pieced together from documents. The central character, even by halfway through the book, was still thin and two-dimensional. There was no deeper exploration beyond primary sources, so it appears; no attempt to really create a story.

All lives have story, if we consider story to be chronology and notable events. But this is not a story in the sense of a good, or even interesting biography. Rather, it's a sequence of famous names and bland events, and no personality to bring them together. Even the chapter on Roget being a prisoner of Napoleon is bullshit. He never was; he was temporarily stuck in Geneva.

This is a bland, boring book. I stopped reading it because every time I picked it up I regretted wasting my time. Unless you're into that kind of work too, may I recommend that, when you see this book, you keep walking.

[Ariana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a biography of the man who eventually wrote Roget's Thesaurus and not a story of the creation of that work, as I had expected. I had hoped for something more in the vein of The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary or The Story of Ain't: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published and so was disappointed. That said, Peter Mark Roget led an interesting life that was well documented, providing for interesting reading. Though the details can at times be distracting - it may be remarkable that we know that an event occurred at six in the evening on a particular date in the late 18th century, but providing that level of detail for every event sometimes distracted from the storytelling.

[Rob Sedgwick]

Roget is an interesting character because he didn't really embark on the thing he is remembered for until he was 70. However, he was compiling material for it earlier in his life, but very much as a sideline.

This book is mainly about the first 70 years of his life rather than it is about the last 20. He was relatively well known and had a successful career until he retired and started his "true" undertaking.

The thesis of this book is that he compiled lists to stave off madness, but I think that's rather a fanciful spin on things. He actually was a late bloomer all his life. Like many people, he plodded away with his career until he didn't have to; didn't actually get started in medicine until he was 30, earned enough money to marry late; and hung up his boots when he could afford to before turning to a few notes he had made when younger.