Jenny McMorris's biography marked the 75th anniversary of Henry Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage. He is, it's fair to say, remembered for that book (known, simply, as Fowler) and not for his work as a lexicographer. Fowler is the sacred text of the linguistically self-conscious. McMorris quotes a distinguished judge who 'had been kept from his bed by it "to a very unusual hour", adding that it brought "a terror to living and writing"'. A.J.P. Taylor read the whole thing at least once a year, and ranked it as OUP's greatest publication. Aficionados regularly recite Fowler on split infinitives, as if it were Monty Python on ex-parrots. And nearly seventy years after his death, letters for him still arrive at the Press.

LRB 27 June 2002 | PDF Download