Frederick James Furnivall
Frederick James Furnivall | |
---|---|
Born | 4 February 1825 Egham, England |
Died | 2 July 1910 (aged 85) St George's Square, London, England |
Occupation | Philologist |
Spouse |
Eleanor Dalziel
(m. 1862; sep. 1883) |
Children | 2 |
Frederick James Furnivall
Life
Frederick James Furnivall was born on 4 February 1825 in
In 1862 Furnivall married Eleanor Nickel Dalziel (c. 1838 – 1937). Some authors describe her as a lady's maid, which would have been a socially unusual match at the time,[3] although her social status is disputed.[4] Some time before 1866, Furnivall lost a child, Eena, whom he described as "my sweet, bright, only child".[5] He lost his inheritance in a financial crash in 1867. When he was 58, he separated from Eleanor and their one surviving son to continue a relationship with a 21-year-old female editor named Teena Rochfort-Smith.[6] Two months after his formal separation from Eleanor, in 1883, Rochfort-Smith suffered serious burns while burning correspondence in Goole and died.
Furnivall was a non-smoker and teetotaller all his life. He took interest in physical fitness and was a vegetarian for twenty-five years.[7]
Furnivall died on 2 July 1910.
Oxford English Dictionary
Furnivall was one of the three founders and, from 1861 to 1870, the second editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Despite his scholarship and enthusiasm, his stint as editor of the OED nearly ended the project. For a dictionary maker he had an unfortunate lack of patience, discipline and accuracy.[3][4] After having lost the sub-editors for A, I, J, N, O, P, and W through his irascibility or caprice, he finally resigned.[3] He continued, however, to provide thousands of quotations for the dictionary until his death. OED editor James Murray said of Furnivall: "He has been by far the most voluminous of our 'readers', and the slips in his handwriting and the clippings by him from printed books, and from newspapers and magazines, form a very large fraction of the millions in the Scriptorium."[8]
Furnivall joined the Philological Society in 1847 and was its Secretary from 1853 almost until his death in 1910 at the age of 85.
He received an honorary
Literary societies
Furnivall indefatigably promoted the study of early English literature. He founded a series of literary and philological societies: the Early English Text Society (1864), the Chaucer Society (1868), the Ballad Society (1868), the New Shakspere Society (1873), the Browning Society (1881, with Emily Hickey), the Wyclif Society (1882), and the Shelley Society (1885).[4] Some of these, notably the Early English Text Society, were very successful; all were characterised by extreme controversy. The most acrimonious of all was the New Shakspere Society, scene of a bitter dispute between Furnivall and Algernon Charles Swinburne.[10][11]
These societies were primarily textual publishing ventures. Furnivall edited texts for the Early English Text Society, for the Roxburghe Club and the Rolls Series; but his most important work was on Geoffrey Chaucer. His "Six-Text" edition of the Canterbury Tales was a new conception. It has been described as containing full and accurate transcriptions, though some modern scholars disagree about his merits as an editor. [citation needed] His work, and that of the amateurs he recruited, was often slapdash, but it was substantial, and it laid the foundation for all subsequent editions. He was one of a small group of Victorian scholars who have been credited with establishing the academic study of English literature.[12]
Working Men's College
In the 1850s, Furnivall became involved in various
Rowing
Furnivall was always an enthusiastic
Furnivall the sculler may have been the original of his acquaintance Kenneth Grahame's character Ratty in The Wind in the Willows[13] and it has also been suggested that he inspired the portrayal of the god Pan in the same work.[14]
References
- ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Furnivall, Frederick James". Encyclopædia Britannica. 11 (11th ed.) Cambridge University Press. p. 366.
- ^ "Furnivall, Frederic James (FNVL842FJ)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-860702-1.
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33298. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Furnivall, Frederick J. (1866). The Book of Quinte Essence. Oxford University Press.
- ^ Thompson, Ann. "Teena Rochfort Smith, Frederick Furnivall, and the New Shakspere Society's Four-Text Edition of Hamlet". Shakespeare Quarterly 49.2 (Summer 1998): 125–139. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2902297.
- ISBN 0-8153-2890-7
- ^ Brewer, Charlotte. "Contributors". Examining the OED. Archived from the original on 19 October 2008. Retrieved 28 January 2016.
- ^ "University intelligence". The Times. No. 36752. London. 26 April 1902. p. 10.
- ^ Gosse, Edmund (1917). The Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne. New York: The Macmillan Company. pp. 249–250.
(Swinburn) had a diabolical cleverness in tormenting Furnival, and he knew how to hint the exact charge which would excite that unfortunate man to frenzy.
- JSTOR 20776051.
- Project MUSE 694171.
- ISBN 978-0192805768. Retrieved 7 August 2017.
- ISBN 9780674034471. Retrieved 7 August 2017.
Sources
- Peterson, William S. (2004). "Furnivall, Frederick James (1825–1910)". In H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (ed.). doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33298. Retrieved 26 January 2005. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Utz, Richard (2002). Chaucer and the Discourse of German Philology. A History of Reception and an Annotated Bibliography of Studies, 1793–1948. Turnhout: Brepols.
- The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
External links
- Works by Frederick James Furnivall at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Frederick James Furnivall at Internet Archive
- Works by Frederick James Furnivall at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)