Frederick James Furnivall

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.[1] Frederick James Furnivall was born on 4 February 1825 in Egham, Surrey, the son of a surgeon who had made his fortune from running the Great Fosters lunatic asylum.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.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.In 1896 Furnivall founded the Hammersmith Sculling Club (now called Furnivall Sculling Club), 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".[4] 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.
St George's SquareLondonphilologistNew English DictionaryEnglish literatureThe Canterbury TalesLondon Working Men's CollegeGreat FostersUniversity College, LondonTrinity Hall, CambridgeLincoln's InnTeena Rochfort-SmithteetotallervegetarianOxford English DictionaryJames MurrayPhilological SocietyDoctor of LettersUniversity of OxfordDoctor of PhilosophyUniversity of BerlinHonorary FellowEarly English Text SocietyNew Shakspere SocietyBrowning SocietyEmily HickeyAlgernon Charles Swinburnetextual publishing venturesRoxburghe ClubRolls SeriesGeoffrey ChaucerChristian socialistCharles KingsleyJohn RuskinWorking Men's CollegeoarsmanscullingThamesFurnivall Sculling ClubKenneth GrahameProject MUSEWinchester, SimonGrahame, KennethLerer, SethProject GutenbergInternet ArchiveLibriVox