Walter William Skeat

Walter William Skeat, Template:Post-nominals (21 November 1835Template:Snd6 October 1912) was a British philologist and Anglican deacon. The pre-eminent British philologist of his time, he was instrumental in developing the English language as a higher education subject in the United Kingdom.

Life

Skeat was born in London<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> to architect William Skeat, of Perry Hill, Sydenham,<ref name="auto">Interpreters of Early Medieval Britain, ed. Michael Lapidge, Oxford University Press (on behalf of the British Academy), 2002, p. 37</ref> later of Mount Street, Park Lane, City of Westminster, and his wife Sarah, daughter of Timothy Bluck. The Skeat family were a branch of an ancient Surrey family, and were resident in the parish of St George Hanover Square since the 1700s.<ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref><ref>History of the families of Skeet, Somerscales, Widdrington, Wilby, Murray, Blake, Grimshaw, and others, 'by a connection of the same', Mitchell, Hughes & Clarke (London), 1906, pp. 57–58</ref> He was educated at King's College School (Wimbledon), Highgate School, and Christ's College, Cambridge. He became a fellow at Christ's College in July 1860.<ref>Template:Acad</ref>

In 1860 Skeat was ordained an Anglican deacon and married Bertha Clara. In December 1860, he became a curate at East Dereham, where he served during 1861 and most of 1862. From 1862 to 1863, Skeat served as the curate at Godalming, Surrey. In October 1864, he returned to Cambridge University as a mathematics lecturer, a position he held until 1871.

Skeat soon developed an interest in the history of the English language. In 1870, Skeat and Henry Bradshaw collaborated on an edition of Geoffrey Chaucer for the University of Oxford. However, the project fell through when Bradshaw failed to keep his commitment. In 1894, Skeat published a six-volume edition of Chaucer; a supplementary volume, Chaucerian Pieces, was published in 1897.Template:Sfn

In 1878 Skeat was elected the Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge. He completed Mitchell Kemble's edition of the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, and did work both in Old English and the Gothic language. Skeat is best known for his work in Middle English, and for his standard editions of Chaucer and William Langland's Piers Plowman.<ref name="EB1911">{{#if: |

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Skeat was the founder and only president of the English Dialect Society from 1873 to 1896.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> The society's purpose was to collect materials for the publication of The English Dialect Dictionary. The society was dissolved in 1897.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Skeat is buried at the Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge.Template:Cn

Skeat's wife, Bertha Clara, born 6 February 1840, died 15 July 1924, is buried with him, as is a daughter Bertha Marian Skeat who was a writer and headmistress.<ref name=dad>Kenneth Sisam, "Skeat, Walter William (1835–1912)", rev. Charlotte Brewer, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008 accessed 23 Feb 2017</ref> His son was the anthropologist Walter William Skeat. His grandsons include the noted palaeographer T. C. Skeat and the stained glass painter Francis Skeat.<ref name="Saint Peter">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Work

Etymology, lexicography, and toponymic studies

In pure philology, Skeat's principal achievement was his An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (4 parts, 1879–1882; rev., and enlarged, 1910).<ref name="EB1911"/> While preparing the dictionary, he wrote hundreds of short articles on word origins for the London-based journal Notes and Queries.

Skeat also coined the term ghost word and was a leading expert in this subject.<ref name="Ghost-words">Skeat, Walter William; Presidential address on 'Ghost-Words' in: Transactions of the Philological Society, 1885–87, pp. 350–373; Published for the society by Trübner & Co., Ludgate Hill, London, 1887.</ref> Skeat was also a pioneer of toponymy. His major publications in this field include:

• A Concise Dictionary of Middle English (1888), in conjunction with A. L. Mayhew
• "A Glossary of Tudor and Stuart Words" (1914) with A. L. Mayhew
• The place-names of Cambridgeshire (1901)
• Place-names of Huntingdonshire (1902)
• Place-names of Hertfordshire (1904)
• Place-names of Bedfordshire (1906)
• Place-names of Berkshire (1911)
• Place-names of Suffolk (1913)

Editions

• The Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian Versions (1871)
• Chaucer's A Treatise on the Astrolabe (1872)<ref>Geoffrey Chaucer, A treatise on the astrolabe addressed to his son Lowys by Geoffrey Chaucer, A.D. 1391, edited from the earliest MSS, ed. by Walter W. Skeat, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 16 (London: Trübner, 1872).</ref>
• Piers Plowman in three parallel texts (1886)
• The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1894–97)<ref>The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. by Walter W. Skeat (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894–1897).</ref>

Skeat edited works for the Early English Text Society:

• Bruce of John Barbour
• Pierce the Ploughman's Crede
• Havelok the Dane
• William of Palerne

For the Scottish Text Society:

• Skeat edited The Kingis Quair,
• Skeat published an edition (2 vols., 1871) of Chatterton, with an investigation of the sources of the obsolete words used by Chatterton.
• Skeat published an edition of Chaucer in one volume for general readers
• Skeat published an edition of Chaucer's A Treatise on the Astrolabe, with an expert commentary.

Skeat produced what is still the main edition of Ælfric of Eynsham's Lives of the Saints;<ref>Ælfric's Lives of Saints: Being a Set of Sermons on Saints' Days Formerly Observed by the English Church, Edited from Manuscript Julius E. VII in the Cottonian Collection, with Various Readings from Other Manuscripts, ed. by Walter W. Skeat, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 76, 82, 94, 114, 2 vols (London: Trübner, 1881–1900).</ref> the edition includes translations which were largely the work of two women referred to as Mss Gunning and Wilkinson, who were credited in the preface to his edition.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Teaching

According to A. J. Wyatt, Skeat "was not a great teacher ... he left the teaching to those who had learned from him" – i.e. Wyatt himself and Israel Gollancz – "his teaching was episodic. Yet his lectures were eagerly followed by the fit though few; they were always interesting when least utilitarian, when he forgot examinations and syllabuses, and poured forth from the quaint storehouse of his motley memory things new and old."<ref>Obituary of Skeat in The Cambridge Review, 34 (1912), 15, cited by Michael Lapidge, 'Introduction: The Study of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in Cambridge, 1878—1999', in H. M. Chadwick and the Study of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in Cambridge, ed. by Michael Lapidge (Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications, 2015) [=Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 69/70 (2015)], pp. 1—58 (p. 12 n. 44).</ref>

Skeat's pedagogical 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<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and 1891)
• A Student's Pastime (1896), a volume of essays
• The Chaucer Canon (1900)
• A Primer of Classical and English Philology (1905)<ref name="EB1911"/>

International relations

Skeat was one of the very few scholars in English studies who had sufficient expertise to compete with the state-employed and tenured colleagues from German universities.

Like Henry Sweet, Skeat regarded Geoffrey Chaucer and other medieval English authors as part of his national heritage and objected to German scholars publishing works on them. At one point, Skeat exclaimed that even though he was "...to some extent disqualified, as being merely a native of London, in which city Chaucer himself was born," he should be able to contribute scholarship on Chaucer without perceived German interference.<ref>Chaucer. The Minor Poems, ed. Walter W. Skeat (Oxford, 1888), p vii. See further Richard Utz, Chaucer and the Discourse of German Philology (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 67–69.</ref>

External links

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• A Moeso-Gothic glossary Cornell University Library Historical Monographs Collection.
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