W. W. Skeat

Walter William Skeat (21 November 1835 – 6 October 1912), FBA, was the pre-eminent English philologist of his time, and was instrumental in developing English as a higher education subject in the United Kingdom.

Skeat was born in London and educated at King's College School (Wimbledon), Highgate School, and Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in July 1860.

In 1860 Skeat was ordained an Anglican deacon, married, and became a curate in December 1860 at East Dereham, where he served during the year 1861 and most of 1862. In 1862–1863 he was a curate at Godalming. In October 1864 he returned to Cambridge as a mathematical lecturer, remaining in this capacity until 1871.

Skeat developed an interest in the history of English, and by his own account was at first mainly guided in the study of Chaucer by Henry Bradshaw, with whom he was to have participated in the edition of Chaucer planned in 1870 by the University of Oxford, having declined in Bradshaw's favour an offer of the editorship made to himself. Bradshaw's perseverance was not equal to his genius, and the scheme came to nothing for the time, but was eventually resumed and carried into effect by Skeat in an edition of six volumes (1894), a supplementary volume of Chaucerian Pieces being published in 1897.

In 1878 he was elected Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge. He completed Mitchell Kemble's edition of the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, and did much other work both in Anglo-Saxon and in Gothic, but is perhaps most generally known for his labours in Middle English, and for his standard editions of Chaucer and William Langland's Piers Plowman.

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