Elizabeth Knowles became a historical lexicographer through working as a library researcher for the Oxford English Dictionary Supplement, and then as a Senior Editor for the 4th edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993). She has been Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (7th edition, 2009), and her editorial credits include What They Didn't Say: A Book of Misquotations (2006), and the Little Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (2009).