Henry Hitchings
| Henry Hitchings | |
|---|---|
| Born | 11 December 1974 |
| Alma mater |
Eton College Christ Church, Oxford University College London |
| Known for | Author and critic |
| Website | www.henryhitchings.com |
Henry Hitchings FRSL (born 11 December 1974) is an author, reviewer and critic, specializing in narrative non-fiction, with a particular emphasis on language and cultural history. The second of his books, The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, won the 2008 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.
He was a King's Scholar at Eton College before going to Christ Church, Oxford, and then to University College London to research his PhD on Samuel Johnson.
In 2005 he published Dr Johnson's Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World, a biography of Samuel Johnson's epochal A Dictionary of the English Language (1755). The first popular account of Dr Johnson's magnum opus, it "charts the struggle and ultimate triumph of one of the first attempts to 'fix' the language, which despite its imperfections proved to be one of the English language's most significant cultural monuments". Avoiding the more usual portrayal of Dr Johnson as "a lovable eccentric", Hitchings "keeps drawing attention to the unremitting intelligence that Johnson's lexicographical labours demanded, not least in separating out the ramifying senses of common words". Whilst declaring, "Hitchings's task is to rescue Johnson from Boswell's attentions," Will Self pointed out, "The Johnson of the Dictionary was never known to Boswell, and as the older man was ill-disposed to animadvert on his younger self, Boswell got such basics as the great man's working methods on the Dictionary glaringly wrong. Not so Hitchings."
The American edition was titled Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr Johnson's Dictionary.
In the United States, Defining the World won the Modern Language Association's prize for the best work by an independent scholar in 2005.
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