Everything about Walter William Skeat totally explained
Walter William Skeat (
November 21,
1835 -
1912),
English philologist, was born in
London on the 21st of November 1835, and educated at
King's College School (
Wimbledon),
Highgate School, and
Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in July 1860. The noted palaeographer
T. C. Skeat was his grandson.
Life
In
1878 he was elected
Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at
Cambridge. He completed
Mitchell Kemble's edition of the
Anglo-Saxon Gospels, and did much other work both in Anglo-Saxon and in
Gothic, but is perhaps most generally known for his labours in
Middle English, and for his standard editions of
Chaucer and
Langland's
Piers Plowman.
As he himself generously declared, he was at first mainly guided in the study of Chaucer by
Henry Bradshaw, with whom he was to have participated in the edition of Chaucer planned in 1870 by the
University of Oxford, having declined in Bradshaw's favour an offer of the editorship made to himself. Bradshaw's perseverance wasn't equal to his genius, and the scheme came to nothing for the time, but was eventually resumed and carried into effect by Skeat in an edition of six volumes (1894), a supplementary volume of
Chaucerian Pieces being published in
1897. He also issued an edition of Chaucer in one volume for general readers, and a separate edition of his
Treatise on the Astrolabe, with a learned commentary.
His edition of Piers Plowman in three parallel texts was published in 1886; and, besides the
Treatise on the Astrolabe, he edited numerous books for the
Early English Text Society, including the
Bruce of
John Barbour,
Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, the romances of
Havelok the Dane and
William of Palerne, and
Ælfric's
Lives of the Saints (4 vols.). For the
Scottish Text Society he edited
The Kingis Quair, usually ascribed to
James I of Scotland, and he published an edition (2 vols., 1871) of
Chatterton, with an investigation of the sources of the obsolete words employed by him.
Work
In pure philology, Skeat's principal achievement is his
Etymological English Dictionary (4 parts, 1879-1882; rev, and enlarged, 1910). While preparing the dictionary he wrote hundreds of short articles on word origins for the London-based journal
Notes and Queries.
His other works include:
- Specimens of English from 1394 to 1597 (1871)
- Specimens of Early English from 1298 to 1393 (1872), in conjunction with Richard Morris
- Principles of English Etymology (2 series, 1887 and 1891)
- A Concise Dictionary of Middle English (1888), in conjunction with AL Mayhew
- A Student's Pastime (1896), a volume of essays
- The Chaucer Canon (1900)
- A Primer of Classical and English Philology (1905)
Further Information
Get more info on 'Walter William Skeat'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://walter_william_skeat.totallyexplained.com">Walter William Skeat Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
