This section of Examining the OED is under construction. It contains a series of pages on writers and the dictionary, and on individual authors' use of language and their treatment in OED. Our first, pilot, example is Auden; studies of other writers are in preparation. 

Further information on OED's treatment of selected 18c female authors can be found in pages under Types of source, a new section of the site opening in January 2010.
 
An outline of the implications of OED's reliance on literary quotations for its evidence of a word's history and usage can be found in Initial results: Literary sources, under the headings OED1, Supplement, Literature and the lexicon?, Lexicographical reservations; cf. also Literature and the nation. And for recent discussion of the OED's use of literary quotations, see Considine 2009 and Brewer 2010, who disagree!

The pages nested below look at some of these matters in greater depth.