Henry Watson Fowler

Henry Watson Fowler (born March 10, 1858 in Tonbridge , Kent , † December 26, 1933 in Hinton St George , Somerset ) was a British lexicographer, philologist and English scholar . He is best known for his English style primer.

Fowler was the son of a clergyman and teacher and attended a school in Germany and from 1871 the rugby school. There he excelled in Latin and Greek. From 1877 to 1881 he studied at Oxford. He spent a lot of time playing rugby. It was not until 1886 that he received a degree because he - secretly an atheist - did not take the required Anglican theology exams. He was then a teacher, first in Edinburgh and then in Yorkshire at Sedbergh School, where he taught English, Latin and Greek and in 1882 became a master. He was respected (he was called Joey Stinker because of his heavy smoking ) but did not go on to become a housemaster and instead left school after refusing to give Anglican religion classes. In 1899 he moved to London (Chelsea) and worked as a freelance writer and journalist.

In 1903 he moved to Guernsey and began a collaboration with his brother Francis George Fowler , first a translation by Lukian of Samosata . The greatest success followed in 1906, a style guide that appeared as The King's English . They were then commissioned by Oxford University Press to publish an abridged edition of the Oxford English Dictionary , which appeared in 1911 as the Concise Oxford Dictionary . It still appears in revisions to this day. From 1914 to 1916 he and his brother volunteered in the British Army (Henry Fowler reduced his age to be accepted). He got sick at the front and was sent home. He then continued working with his brother on the Pocket English Dictionary and Modern English Usage, which became one of the most famous English style books, which was so successful when published in 1926 that three new editions were necessary in the first year alone. While the book was authoritarian about the correct use of English, Fowler also wrote it with wit and irony. After his brother died of tuberculosis in 1918, he moved to Hinton St George in Somerset.

He was involved in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (editor CT Onions , 1933). He also wrote a volume with poetry.

In 1908 he married Jessie Marian Wills (1862–1930). The marriage remained childless.

Although he did not excel in sports at Oxford, he took the habit of swimming in the nearest body of water every day after a long hike.

Fonts

• More Popular Fallacies . London: Elliot Stock, 1904 (magazine articles, under the pseudonym Quillet)
• with Francis George Fowler: The King's English . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906, abridged edition 1908, Bartleby
• Sentence Analysis . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
• Si Mihi! London: Brown, Langham, 1907 (journal articles, under the pseudonym Egomet).
  • New edition under his own name as If Wishes Were Horses . London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929.
• Between Boy and Man . London: Watts, 1908.
• with Francis George Fowler: Concise Oxford Dictionary . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911, 2nd edition 1929
• with Francis George Fowler: Pocket Oxford Dictionary . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924.
• A Dictionary of Modern English Usage . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926. Wordsworth Edition reprint, 1994,
  • A complete revision by Robert Burchfield came out in 1996. Before that, the 2nd edition appeared in 1965, less edited by Ernest Gowers .
• Some Comparative Values . Oxford: Blackwell, 1929 (newspaper articles).
• Rhymes of Darby to Joan . London: JM Dent & Sons, 1931.
• with W. Little, J. Coulson: Shorter Oxford English Dictionary . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933.

In 1905 he and FG Fowler published a translation of the works of Lukian von Samosata for Clarendon Press in four volumes.

Essays:

• Books We Think We Have Read . In: Spectator January 20, 1900.
• Outdoor London . In: Anglo-Saxon Review June 1901.

literature

• Jenny McMorris: The Warden of English. The Life of HW Fowler . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001.

Web links

• Jim Holt, HW Fowler, The King of English, The New York Times, 2009
• Works at Project Gutenberg, translation by Lukian, Three Articles on Metaphor