Joseph Wright (philologist)
Joseph Wright (* 1855 in Thackley , England ; † 1930 ) was an English philologist and dialectologist .
Life
Joseph Wright was born in Thackley near Bradford ( Yorkshire , England) in 1855 to a poor family. He began working in a wool mill at the age of six and was illiterate by the age of fifteen, but taught himself to read, write and do arithmetic as a teenager alongside his work in a West Riding factory . Wright also learned French and German in an evening school, and soon he even taught himself Latin. At 18, Wright opened night school in his home to earn extra money. When he was 21 years of age, Wright resolved to study in Germany. He continued by boat to Holland on and walked on foot to Heidelberg, where he attended the local university studied so many languages such as Sanskrit, Gothic, Old Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Russian, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old and Middle High German and Old English. He did his doctorate while still in Germany. On his return to England, he was finally offered an extraordinary professorship in comparative philology at Oxford University , which he accepted. From 1901 to 1925 he was a professor at Oxford. In 1904 he was elected a member of the British Academy . His most famous student was JRR Tolkien .
wife
In 1896 he married Elizabeth Mary Lea, with whom he published the book Old and Middle English Grammars . She also wrote the book Rustic Speech and Folklore (Oxford University Press 1913), in which she described her numerous trips to the Yorkshire Dales. After Wright's death, she wrote a biography about his life: The Life of Joseph Wright .
Works
The 5,000-page six-volume English Dialect Dictionary (EDD), which was created between 1896 and 1905 under the direction of Wright by hundreds of employees and with the help of numerous existing glossaries , is Wright's most valuable legacy.
Web links
- Literature by and about Joseph Wright in the catalog of the German National Library
- Wright's Old High German Primer ( Memento from July 29, 2004 in the web archive archive.today )
- Wright's Middle High German Primer
- Wright's Grammar of the Gothic Language
- JRR Tolkien By Brian Compton
Remarks
- ↑ On Wright and Tolkien cf. Humphrey Carpenter , JRR Tolkien. A biography , 2nd edition, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-608-93431-6 , pp. 70f. Wright's résumé is also there.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wright, Joseph |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British dialectologist and philologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1855 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Thackley , England |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1930 |