View source for Henry Bradley

{{short description|British philologist and lexicographer}}
{{Other people}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
'''Henry Bradley''', [[Fellow of the British Academy|FBA]] (3 December 1845 – 23 May 1923) was a British [[philologist]] and [[lexicographer]] who succeeded [[James Murray (lexicographer)|James Murray]] as senior editor of the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' (OED).<ref>{{cite magazine|title=BRADLEY, Henry|magazine=Who's Who|year=1907|volume= 59|pages=202–203|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yEcuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA202}}</ref>

==Early life==
Bradley had humble beginnings as a farmer's son in [[Nottinghamshire]], but by adolescence, he was already steeped in several languages of [[classical antiquity|Classical]] learning, and he is supposed to have learned Russian in only 14 days.  [[Simon Winchester]] records that some of Bradley's childhood notebooks, discovered by a friend, contained
<blockquote>
...lists of words peculiar to the [[Pentateuch]] or [[Isaiah]], Hebrew [[Hapax legomenon|singletons]], the form of the verb ''to be'' in Algerine, [[Arabic alphabet|Arabic]], bardic and [[Cuneiform script|cuneiform]] lettering, Arabisms and [[Chaldean Neo-Aramaic|Chaldaisms]] in the [[New Testament]], with vocabularies that imply he was reading [[Homer]], [[Virgil]], [[Sallust]] and the [[Hebrew Bible|Hebrew Old Testament]] at the same time.  In another group the notes pass from the life of Antar ben Toofail by 'Admar' (apparently of the age of [[Haroun al-Raschid|Haroun Arrashid]]) to the rules of [[Latin poetry|Latin verse]], [[Richard Hakluyt|Hakluyt]] and [[Hebrew cantillation|Hebrew accents]], whereupon follow notes on [[Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet|Sir William Hamilton]] and [[Dugald Stewart]] and a translation of parts of [[Aeschylus]]' ''[[Prometheia|Prometheus]]''...
</blockquote>

For a long time, he was employed as a correspondence clerk for a [[cutlery]] firm in [[Sheffield]].  The first public outlet for his erudition was as a columnist in the ''Academy'', a weekly literary magazine run by [[James Sutherland Cotton|J. S. Cotton]] in London.

==''Oxford English Dictionary''==
Bradley came to James Murray's attention in February 1884 when he reviewed the first [[fascicle (book)|fascicle]] of the OED, '''A–Ant''', in the ''Academy''.  Bradley's review praised the clear format and simple design of the dictionary and its economy in using quotations, but it also challenged Murray's [[etymology]], and this caused quite a stir.  At the time, Bradley was an unknown freelance writer with no official academic credentials, yet his essay, showing a close knowledge of several languages, contained criticism that none of Murray's colleagues had been able to provide.  ''Anemone'' could not correctly be rendered as "daughter of the wind," for example, because the [[Greek language|Greek]] suffix was not "exclusively [[patronymic]]," and ''alpaca'' was not [[Arabic]] in origin, as Murray had written, but more likely Spanish.

Bradley's triumph was that both his praise and his criticism were fair and well-tempered; he was admiring without being sycophantic and corrective without being hostile.  Recognizing that he had found a worthy peer who could prove invaluable in creating the Dictionary, Murray hired Bradley, first as an assistant editor, then as joint senior editor.

He has been overshadowed by James Murray, and it must be conceded that Bradley was a slower, less durable worker, frequently ill.  However, he remains a noteworthy linguistic scholar, largely self-taught.

==Other work and honours==
After starting work on the OED, Bradley began to get the recognition he deserved, receiving honorary degrees from [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] and [[University of Heidelberg|Heidelberg]] and becoming a [[fellow]] of [[Magdalen College, Oxford|Magdalen College]] and the [[British Academy]].  He also served as President of London's [[Philological Society]] and helped found the Society for Pure English (SPE), along with [[Henry Watson Fowler]] and others.

Henry Bradley contributed to the ''[[Dictionary of National Biography]]'' and the 11th edition of the ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition|Encyclopædia Britannica]].'' He is the author, for example, for the article on [[Caedmon]], the first English Christian poet.<ref>Wikisource Author Index. [[wikisource:Author:Henry Bradley|Henry Bradley (1845–1923)]].</ref><ref>Henry Bradley (1911). "[[wikisource:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cædmon|Cædmon]]". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.) ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. '''4.''' (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 394-395.</ref>

Bradley's most interesting book is ''The Making of English'', the culmination of a philological life.  It assesses change in English and the reasons for its borrowings from other tongues down through history, all without resorting to the obscure sets of [[symbol]]s so unhappily relied on by specialised [[linguistics]].  In his Author's Preface, Bradley addresses the book "to educated readers unversed in philology," and he succeeds in popularising his speciality and making it readable rather than resorting to [[jargon]], which he considered an affront to plain English.

==Death and reputation==
It was for the SPE that Bradley wrote his last piece, an introduction to "Tract No. XIV: On the Terms Briton, British, Britisher".  He wrote the first three paragraphs, suffered a stroke, and died two days later.  The piece was finished by [[Robert Bridges]] and published along with Fowler's "Preposition at End" and a brief [[obituary]].

Simon Winchester's ''The Meaning of Everything'' is the history of the ''OED'' which treats Bradley in most depth.

==Works==
* ''[https://archive.org/details/cu31924027943400 The story of the Goths, from the earliest times to the end of the Gothic dominion in Spain]'' (1887)
* ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (1888–1923): [https://archive.org/stream/oed03arch#page/740/mode/2up E], [https://archive.org/details/oed04arch F–G], [https://archive.org/details/oed6aarch L], [https://archive.org/stream/oed6barch#page/n9/mode/2up M], [https://archive.org/details/oed8barch S–Sh], [https://archive.org/stream/oed9aarch#page/n761/mode/1up St], and part of [https://archive.org/stream/oedxbarch#page/n353/mode/2up W]
* ''[https://archive.org/details/makingenglish03bradgoog The Making of English]'' (1904)
* {{cite Q|Q107730082|author-mask=0}}<!-- English place-names -->
* ''Collected Papers of Henry Bradley'' (1928) contains his shorter works, with a memoir by Robert Bridges

==References==
{{Reflist}}
*Jenny McMorris, ''The Warden of English: The Life of H.W. Fowler'', 2001. {{ISBN|0-19-866254-8}}.
*K.M. Elisabeth Murray, ''Caught in the Web of Words: James A.H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary'', 1977. {{ISBN|0-300-02131-3}}.
*[[Simon Winchester]], ''[[The Meaning of Everything]]'', 2003. {{ISBN|0-19-517500-X}}.

==External links==
{{wikisource|works=or}}
* {{Gutenberg author |id=Bradley,+Henry | name=Henry Bradley}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Henry Bradley |sopt=t}}
* [http://oed.com/about/editors/bradley.html Dictionary editors: Henry Bradley] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090109204312/http://oed.com/about/editors/bradley.html |date=9 January 2009 }}, ''Oxford English Dictionary'' website
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20160303203100/http://oed.hertford.ox.ac.uk/main/content/view/345/374/ Who's who > Bradley, Henry] ''Examining the OED'' website, by Charlotte Brewer

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bradley, Henry}}
[[Category:1845 births]]
[[Category:1923 deaths]]
[[Category:British lexicographers]]
[[Category:Chief editors of the Oxford English Dictionary]]
[[Category:Fellows of the British Academy]]
[[Category:Presidents of the Philological Society]]