Getting words right

It is not the fate of many of "those who toil at the lower employments of life", among which Dr Johnson, tongue surely well in cheek, apostrophised lexicographers, to attain to what must be the wordsmith's ultimate memorial: ascent to eponymy. We have Johnson himself, Brewer of "phrase and fable", the slang collector Partridge and America's Webster. Even James Murray, editor of the New, later the Oxford English Dictionary, never made it, although a few intimates did, around 1890, talk of "Murray's Dictionary". Henry Fowler, creator of The Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), is another on this select list. He had already edited the first edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911) and an earlier usage manual entitled The King's English (1906), written with his brother Frank. He would also contribute to such OED spin-offs as the original versions of the Shorter and Pocket Oxford Dictionaries, but it was his guide to "elegant variation", "exclamatory inversion", "sturdy indefensibles" and "walled-up objects", as well as multi-paged disquisitions on "of", "the", "in", "nor" and much besides, that made Fowler Fowler. It remains one of Eng Lit's standard texts.

Fowler is of the second generation of Oxford lexicographers, joining the project early in the 20th century, after such mid-19th century pioneers as Chenevix-Trench, Herbert Coleridge, Frederick Furnivall and, of course, Murray himself. He would not contribute to the major work, although his first "hit", the COD, was, of course, a subset of those 10 volumes. Yet, while of them he may have been, among them he rarely was: while editors such as Bradley, Craigie and Onions and the administrator RW Chapman stuck close to Oxford, Fowler never visited, preferring domestic life with his beloved wife Jessie, in their homes on Guernsey and later in Somerset. Some characteristics were shared: like Murray he had been a schoolmaster - in his case at Sedbergh, where he seems to have fallen into the "stern but fair" category, and never truly found a vocation. Like the "muscular Christian" Furnivall, who, among other exercises, coached an all-shopgirl rowing eight and loved everything sporty, he was undoubtedly muscular, running and swimming to an advanced age, but as a convinced atheist, definitely no Christian. Like all the lexicographers, he suffered from the University Press's ingrained parsimony, but unlike Murray, constantly struggling on his subsistence salary, he seemed unworried by financial needs, finding the profits that accrued from the hugely successful English Usage gratifying but almost embarrassing.

Preternaturally shy, he turned down his invitation to the great dinner celebrating the completed publication of the OED in 1928.

It was his pursuit of athleticism that brought him to another adventure, far from lexicographical: he was 56 when, in 1915, he managed, along with his brother Frank, coauthor of the King's English and himself 44, to enlist as a soldier in the First World War. In the event, he would never fire a shot in anger, and was discharged in 1916; he returned to work. His brother, whose health was wrecked by his service, was less fortunate: he died in May 1918, of pulmonary failure; the survivor was left to finish their major work alone.

Fowler also resembled Murray in that it took some time before his masters in Clarendon Street began to appreciate his value. Not, perhaps, until the Concise began turning up profits did the Press begin to take notice: from then on, almost until Fowler's death, the editors were keen to keep him, and, while he lived, his brother, hard at work. It was the fear of their absconding elsewhere that engaged the pair first in the Pocket and then Modern English Usage. With that finished, and hugely successful (60,000 sales in the first year) the self-professed "heterodox expert" turned to his final project: the Oxford Dictionary of Modern English. This, despite work that continued up to his deathbed, would never appear. The project collapsed when its author died in 1933, shortly after the publication of yet another work in which he had played a major role, the Shorter Oxford Dictionary; he was 75. His eponym, the book that appeared 75 years ago and has now reached its third edition, lives on.

Just how much biography even an eponym will take is debatable, and the demanding nature of dictionary-making is such that "life" is too easily subsumed in labour. In dictionary terms, Fowler is no Murray, and The Warden of English inevitably lacks the depth and resonance of Elizabeth Murray's Caught in the Web of Words, the story of her grandfather and the OED. That said, this remains a thoroughly enjoyable book, a fitting and deserved tribute to its subject and a source of interest and information both for fellow "drudges" and Fowler's many devotees.