The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus by Joshua Kendall.

I thought this biography of the author of Roget’s Thesaurus was full of interesting information interspersed between the author’s attempts to psychoanalyze Roget and all of his family members. He states lots of assumptions about Roget’s life as facts but then gives little or no evidence that those things are true. I liked the book because I learned a lot about Peter Mark Roget, but I often didn’t know what to trust.

For instance, the author states that Roget was self-centered and oblivious to the feelings and needs of others. Then he gives examples of how attentive and loving Roget was with his wife, Mary. I didn’t know what to think. Kendall states that Roget had an illicit sexual relationship with his daughter’s governess for many years after his wife’s death and that his family tried to hide this relationship, but he never says how he knows this to be so nor does he tell us why Roget, a religious man, would not have married the woman who was said to be his mistress. Maybe it’s all so, but I have questions.

I did like learning about how Roget influenced the development of the slide rule and how he loved the invention of his friend, the kaleidoscope. And I was amazed by the description of Roget’s discoveries in the science of optics, discoveries which led directly to the development of motion pictures about a century later. I enjoyed the story of how Roget as a young man escaped from Switzerland and the French authorities there when the Napoleonic Wars were heating up in 1803. I was sad to read about all the instances of mental distress and illness in Roget’s family and about his beloved uncle’s suicide. Altogether, I’m glad I read the book.

But I returned to Jen Bryant’s The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus after reading this adult biography, and I had a new appreciation for Bryant’s skill in distilling the essence of Roget’s life and accomplishments into a picture book. If you want a very brief introduction to Roget’s life, I suggest Bryant’s book. If you then want to know more, you can check out this biography or one of the others I found when I searched.

Peter Mark Roget: The Man Who Became a Book by Nick Rennison.

Peter Mark Roget: The Word and the Man by D.L. Emblen.

I did enjoy this quote from Kendall’s book that encapsulates Roget’s response to Darwin’s then-new theories about the origins of life and the purposes of natural history:

“In his ensuing discussion of plants and animals of every strip that comprised the remainder of the first volume (Bridgewater Treatise), Roget proceeded from the assumption that God has designed all their features in an ingenious way. Roget conceived of God as an artist; and his job as a natural historian was to discover and reveal the order in the work of art known as the universe.”

God the artist, indeed. Roget and I would agree on that assumption.