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The Warden of English: The Life of H.W. Fowler |
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Reviews |
Description:
Following in the footsteps of The Professor and the Madman, a bestselling account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester (who appropriately provides an introduction here), Oxford University Press archivist Jenny McMorris profiles the human being behind another benchmark reference book. Though hardly as colorful as Winchester's "madman" (a convicted murderer who provided many of the OED's entries), Henry Watson Fowler (1858-1933) penned a cogent guide, Modern English Usage, so closely associated with his own forceful views on correct, idiomatic language that most of its numerous users don't bother with the title and simply refer to it as "Fowler." Greatly esteemed by writers and still frequently consulted 75 years after its initial publication, Modern English Usage was a labor of love for Fowler, a brilliant lexicographer who had the unusual gift of making such esoteric matters as syntax and split infinitives both accessible and entertaining to the general public. He was not, by all accounts, a particularly inspiring teacher during the 17 years he labored conscientiously as a Yorkshire schoolmaster, but once Fowler moved to the island of Guernsey and took up freelance writing he proved to have a gift for educating people in print. He emerges in the lengthy excerpts from the letters that McMorris has the good sense to quote as a charming, witty man, not at all the dusty scholar one might expect to produce (with younger brother Frank) books bearing titles like The King's English and The Concise Oxford Dictionary. McMorris's own no-frills prose suffers somewhat by comparison with her subject's, but her conscientious résumé of Fowler's long and productive life will engage readers who want a behind-the-scenes peek at the book publishing industry. --Wendy Smith
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