Charles Richardson (lexicographer)

Charles Richardson (1775–1865) was an English teacher, lexicographer and linguist.

Life

He was born at Tulse Hill in July 1775 and started a legal career, but left it early for scholarly and literary pursuits. He kept a school on Clapham Common, and among his pupils there were Charles James Mathews, who assisted Richardson as a copyist, John Mitchell Kemble, and John Maddison Morton, the dramatist.

Richardson gave up his school after 1827, and then lived at Lower Tulse Hill,

, was bequeathed by him.

Works

Richardson was a philologist of the school of John Horne Tooke. In 1815 he published Illustrations to English Philology, consisting of a critical examination of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language and a reply to Dugald Stewart's criticism of Horne Tooke's Diversions of Purley. The book was reissued in 1826.

In 1818 the opening portions of an English lexicon, by Richardson, appeared in the

. An abridged single volume edition, without the quotations, appeared in 1839, with a new preface, but uncorrected.

He also published a book on the study of language, an explanation of Tooke's Diversions of Purley (1854). He contributed papers to the Gentleman's Magazine, and wrote essays on 'English Grammar and English Grammarians,' and on 'Fancy and Imagination.'

Family

He married the artist Elizabeth Nasmyth, widow of Daniel Terry the actor, whose son was at his school. Elizabeth ran an artist's school at her house assisted by Anne Nasmyth. The six Nasmyth sisters were all artists and at one time they all moved to live close to each other in Putney.^[1] Elizabeth died in 1863, and to her daughter Jane he bequeathed his house at Tulse Hill.

References

• "Richardson, Charles (1775-1865)" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
• Rowena Fowler: "Text and Meaning in Richardson's Dictionary". In: Historical Dictionaries and Historical Dictionary Research, ed. by Julie Coleman and Anne McDermott. Tübingen 2004, p. 109–118.

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Richardson, Charles (1775-1865)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.