Henry Watson Fowler

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Henry Watson Fowler
Born March 10, 1858(1858-03-10)
Tonbridge, Kent, England
Died December 26, 1933 (aged 75)
Chard, Somerset, England
Nationality British
Occupation Schoolmaster, Lexicographer

Henry Watson Fowler (10 March 1858 – 26 December 1933) was an English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on the usage of English. He is notable for both Fowler's Modern English Usage and his work on the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

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[edit] Biography

Born in Tonbridge, Kent, Fowler graduated from Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford, and then spent seventeen years teaching Latin, Greek, and English at Sedbergh School. He then worked as a freelance journalist in London.

In 1903, he moved to the island of Guernsey, where he worked with his brother Francis George Fowler on The King's English (1906), a work meant to encourage writers to be stylistically simple and direct. In 1914, Fowler and his younger brother volunteered for service in the British army; to gain acceptance, the 56-year-old Henry lied about his age. The pair began work on Fowler's Modern English Usage before the end of the war. In 1918, forty-seven-year-old Francis died of tuberculosis "contracted during service with the B.E.F.,"[1] and it is to him that Henry Fowler dedicated Modern English usage when it was published in 1926. Modern English usage is considered by many to be the definitive style guide to British English language.

Currently, The King's English and Modern English Usage remain in print, the latter having been updated by Sir Ernest Gowers for the second edition (1965). The third edition (1996), is Robert Burchfield's extensive rewriting of the original that shifts the book's function from Fowler's largely prescriptive approach to one more descriptive. A Pocket edition (ISBN 0-19-860947-7) edited by Robert Allen, based on Burchfield's edition, is available on-line, to subscribers to the Oxford Reference On-line Premium collection.

On the death of its original editor, Fowler helped complete the first edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, under the editorship of C.T. Onions.

[edit] Media Depictions

The life and career of Fowler was dramatised as The Word Man by the writer Chris Harrald on BBC Radio 4's Afternoon Play on Thursday 17 January 2008.[2].

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ From Henry Fowler's dedication to Modern English Usage, 1926 (Wordsworth Edition, 1994, ISBN 1-85326-318-4).
  2. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/afternoon_play.shtml Accessed 24 January 2008

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Persondata
NAME Fowler, Henry Watson
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Schoolmaster, Lexicographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1858-03-10
PLACE OF BIRTH Tonbridge, Kent, England
DATE OF DEATH 1933-12-26
PLACE OF DEATH Chard, Somerset, England
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Watson_Fowler"
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