Background
Walter William Skeat was born on November 21, 1835, in London, England. He was the son of William Skeat, an architect, and Sarah (Bluck) Skeat.
St Andrew's St, Cambridge CB2 3BU, United Kingdom
Walter William Skeat attended Christ’s College, Cambridge, beginning in 1854.
Southside, Wimbledon Common, Wimbledon, London SW19 4TT, United Kingdom
Skeat studied at the private Kings College School.
Walter William Skeat was born on November 21, 1835, in London, England. He was the son of William Skeat, an architect, and Sarah (Bluck) Skeat.
Skeat studied at the private Kings College School under the esteemed Anglo-Saxon scholar Reverend Oswald Cockayne. In 1854, he enrolled in Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he took course work in theology and mathematics. He was elected a fellow of his college in 1860 and was ordained with holy orders.
In 1860 Skeat accepted his first ecclesiastical appointment as a curate in East Dereham, in Norfolk, where he delivered a lecture titled “On the Origin and Progress of the English Language.” He became a curate at Godaiming, Surrey, in the following year. An illness in 1863 effectively ended his clerical work, and the following year, he received an appointment as a mathematics lecturer at Christ’s College.
However, he maintained his study of language and literature, focusing his work on the little known areas of Old and Middle English, also embarking on the task of producing scholarly books. Skeat received a commission to edit Lancelot of the Laik: A Scottish Metrical Romance by Frederick J. Furnivall, founder of the Early English Text Society, which was set up for the publication of Middle English texts. His superior work on that commission led to another one from Furnivall to edit the fourteenth-century poem Piers Plowman. Skeat’s analysis led to an edition of the piece that became the standard for scholarly study.
In 1864, Skeat published his first book, a translation of Ludwig Uhland’s Songs and Ballads of Uhland. Two years later, he published a pamphlet of one of his own poems, titled A Tale of Ludlow Castle: A Poem. In addition to his landmark scholarship on well-known works, Skeat also spent time editing relatively unknown alliterative poems written in Middle English.
From 1867 through 1886, Skeats edited several works for the Early English Text Society. He also edited Shakespeare’s Plutarch and The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton. He created a glossary for the works of Shakespeare and a glossarial index to Richard Morris’s Specimens of Early English. His scholarship was not limited to secular literature, however. From 1871 to 1887, he created editions of the Holy Gospels in various languages, including versions in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian and Old Mercian. In 1878, Skeat was elected the Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge. In 1879, Skeat published his most distinguished work, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Arranged on a Historical Basis. While Skeat’s was not the first etymological dictionary to have been published, it was the first to utilize new methods of comparative linguistics and phonology, then a technique more common in Germany than in Great Britain. A few years later he published An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language.
Skeat was also interested in dialectology and the study of place-names, and in 1873, he assisted in the founding of the English Dialect Society, an organization devoted to the creation of texts for eventual publication in research volumes and the advancement of lexicology and phonology. Skeat edited several volumes for the English Dialect Society. In 1888, Skeat joined forces with the Reverend A. L. Mayhew to produce A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580, a glossary to assist with the scholarship surrounding early English texts.
Skeat also attempted a task that had thus far intimidated scholars: editing the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer. From 1901 to 1911, Skeat published various studies on place-names in Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Cambridgeshire, and Hertfordshire. In 1911 Skeat published English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day, a text outlining the history of the various dialects of the English language, written in a popular form.
Skeat was the founder and only president of the English Dialect Society from 1873 to 1896.
Skeat's intense academic pursuit in the fields of editing, philology, etymology and early English texts place him firmly in the history of the development of English literature and language scholarship. Respected in his time for codifying the works of literary giants, advancing lesser-known works, and promoting the advancement of English literature as a departmentalized academic field of study, Skeat published several texts still used by modem scholars. Though many of his editions are considered antiquated and have been superseded by works of contemporary academics, many critics concur that his exacting methodology and comprehensive outlook set a new standard of scholarship at the time and created a fastidious approach to understanding the English language and its literature.
Quotes from others about the person
"His attitude toward poetry could be playful - as in the Chaucerian parody that he composed for An English Miscellany: Presented to Dr. Fumivall in Honour of His Seventy-fifth Birthday, in 1901 - or thoughtful, as ... ‘A Life-times Work,’ an undated poem that represents, better than anyone could describe, Skeat’s intelligence, modesty, and hopes for the legacy of his efforts."
Skeat was married to Bertha Clara. They had two sons and three daughters.