Frederick James Furnivall (4 February 1825 – 2 July 1910), one of the co-creators of the
Oxford English DictionaryThe Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press , is a comprehensive dictionary of the English language...
(OED), was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
philologist. frame
He founded a number of learned societies on early English Literature, and made pioneering and massive editorial contributions to the subject, of which the most notable was his parallel text edition of the
Canterbury Tales. He was one of the founders of and teachers at the
London Working Men's CollegeThe Working Men's College, being among the earliest adult education institutions established in the United Kingdom, is Europe's oldest extant centre for further education and perhaps one of its smallest....
and a lifelong campaigner against what he perceived as injustice.
Frederick Furnivall was born at
EghamEgham is a small town in the Runnymede borough of Surrey, in the south-east of England. It is part of the London commuter belt, and about southwest of central London on the River Thames and near junction 13 of the M25 motorway....
,
SurreySurrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford...
, the son of a surgeon who had made his fortune from running the
Great FostersGreat Fosters is a 16th century mansion which once lay within Windsor Great Park and is adjacent to the town of Egham, Surrey, England. It is a Grade I listed building, close to Heathrow and the M25 London orbital Motorway.-History:...
lunatic asylum.
Frederick James Furnivall (4 February 1825 – 2 July 1910), one of the co-creators of the
Oxford English DictionaryThe Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press , is a comprehensive dictionary of the English language...
(OED), was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
philologist. frame
He founded a number of learned societies on early English Literature, and made pioneering and massive editorial contributions to the subject, of which the most notable was his parallel text edition of the
Canterbury Tales. He was one of the founders of and teachers at the
London Working Men's CollegeThe Working Men's College, being among the earliest adult education institutions established in the United Kingdom, is Europe's oldest extant centre for further education and perhaps one of its smallest....
and a lifelong campaigner against what he perceived as injustice.
Life
Frederick Furnivall was born at
EghamEgham is a small town in the Runnymede borough of Surrey, in the south-east of England. It is part of the London commuter belt, and about southwest of central London on the River Thames and near junction 13 of the M25 motorway....
,
SurreySurrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford...
, the son of a surgeon who had made his fortune from running the
Great FostersGreat Fosters is a 16th century mansion which once lay within Windsor Great Park and is adjacent to the town of Egham, Surrey, England. It is a Grade I listed building, close to Heathrow and the M25 London orbital Motorway.-History:...
lunatic asylum. He was educated at
University College LondonUniversity College London is a British university institution and a constituent college of the University of London, based primarily in Bloomsbury, London...
and
Trinity Hall, CambridgeTrinity Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the fifth-oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.- Foundation :...
, where he took an undistinguished mathematics degree. He was called to the bar from
Lincoln's InnThe Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn...
in 1849 and practiced desultorily until 1870.
In 1862 Furnivall married Eleanor Nickel Dalziel (1838?–1937). Some authors describe her as a lady's maid, which would have been a socially unusual match at the time, although her social status is disputed.
Some time before 1866, Furnivall lost a child, Eena, whom he described as "my sweet, bright, only child". He lost his inheritance in a financial crash in 1867.
When he was 58, he left Eleanor and their one surviving son for a 21-year-old secretary named Teena Rochfort-Smith. Two months after his formal separation from Eleanor, Teena Rochfort-Smith was immolated whilst carelessly burning correspondence in
GooleGoole is a town, civil parish and port located approximately inland on the River Ouse in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The port is "highly versatile", and is capable of handling nearly 3 million tonnes of cargo per annum, making it one of the most important ports on the east coast of...
. He died in 1910.
The Oxford English Dictionary
Furnival joined the
Philological SocietyThe Philological Society is the oldest learned society in Great Britain dedicated to the study of language. The society was established in 1842 to "investigate and promote the study and knowledge of the structure, the affinities, and the history of languages"....
in 1847, and was its Secretary from 1853 almost until his death.
Frederick Furnivall was one of the three founders and, from 1861 to 1870, the second editor of the
Oxford English Dictionary. 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.
After having lost the sub-editors for A, I, J, N, O, P & W through his irascibility or caprice, he finally resigned.
Literary societies
Furnival indefatigably promoted the study of early
English literatureEnglish literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was born in Poland, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, V.S....
. He founded a series of literary and philological societies: the
Early English Text SocietyThe Early English Text Society is an organization to reprint early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes are in Middle English and Old English...
(1864), the Chaucer Society, the Ballad Society (1868), the New Shakspere Society (1873), the Browning Society (1881, with Miss Emily Hickey), the Wyclif Society (1882), and the Shelley Society (1885) (Peterson 2004). Some of these, notably the
Early English Text SocietyThe Early English Text Society is an organization to reprint early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes are in Middle English and Old English...
, 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 Swinburne.
These societies were primarily textual publishing ventures. Furnivall edited texts for the
Early English Text SocietyThe Early English Text Society is an organization to reprint early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes are in Middle English and Old English...
, for the
Roxburghe ClubThe Roxburghe Club was formed on 17 June 1812 by leading bibliophiles, at the time the library of the Duke of Roxburghe was auctioned. It took 45 days to sell the entire collection. The first edition of Boccaccio's Decameron, printed by Chrisopher Valdarfer of Venice in 1471, was sold to the...
and the
Rolls SeriesThe Rolls Series, official title The Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, is a major collection of British and Irish historical materials and primary sources, published in the second half of the nineteenth century. Some 255 volumes, representing 99 separate...
; but his most important work was on
Geoffrey ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales...
. 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. 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.
The Working Men's College
In the 1850s Furnivall became involved in various Christian Socialist schemes and his circle included
Charles KingsleyCharles Kingsley was an English clergyman, university professor, historian, and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and north-east Hampshire.-Life and character:...
and
John RuskinJohn Ruskin was an English art critic and social thinker, also remembered as an author, poet and artist. His essays on art and architecture were extremely influential in the Victorian and Edwardian eras....
. It was through this group that he became one of the founders of the
Working Men's CollegeThe Working Men's College, being among the earliest adult education institutions established in the United Kingdom, is Europe's oldest extant centre for further education and perhaps one of its smallest....
, and although he later became
agnosticAgnosticism is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims — particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of deities, spiritual beings, or even ultimate reality — are unknown or, in some forms of agnosticism, unknowable.It is not a...
he always retained a connection with the College. He conceived of the college as a classless, democratic community of learning. One biographer wrote that he formed there a conviction that "scholarship could be pursued by quite ordinary people in a spirit of good-humoured enthusiasm" that was to be the key to his later life.
Rowing
Furnivall was always an enthusiastic
oarsmanRowing is a sport in which athletes race against each other on rivers, on lakes or on the ocean, depending upon the type of race and the discipline. The boats are propelled by the reaction forces on the oar blades as they are pushed against the water...
, and till the end kept up his interest in rowing; with John Beesley in 1845 he introduced the new type of narrow
scullingSculling refers to the use of oars to propel a boat or other watercraft, but the word is used in a number of ways:-Two-oar sculling:Sculling is a form of rowing in which a boat is propelled by one or more rowers, each of whom operates two oars, one held in each hand...
boat, and in 1886 started races on the Thames for sculling fours and sculling eights. In 1896 Furnivall founded the Hammersmith Sculling Club (now called
Furnivall Sculling ClubFurnivall Sculling Club is a rowing club based on the Tideway in Hammersmith, London. It was founded as Hammersmith Sculling Club in 1896 by Dr Frederick James Furnivall. Originally a club for women only, it opened its doors to men in 1901...
), initially for working-class girls, and he "entered into its activities with his usual boyish enthusiasm, for it brought together two of his favourite activities: vigorous outdoor exercise and enjoyment of the company of young women".