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Henry Sweet (1845-1912) was a philologist, and is also considered to be an early linguist. He specialized in the Germanic languages, particularly Anglo-Saxon (an early version of English), Old Icelandic, and West Saxon. Sweet also published on larger issues of phonetics and grammar in language, and some of his ideas are still discussed. Some of Sweet's works are still in print and continue to be used as course texts at colleges and universities. Some of the books he wrote are Handbook on Phonetics (1877), Oldest English Texts (1885), and Primer of Old Icelandic (1888). He also edited several books for the Early English Text Society. He never managed to get a position with a college, which disturbed him greatly; he had done poorly in school, he had annoyed many people through bluntness, and failed to take every effort to gather official support. George Bernard Shaw described Henry Higgins (a character in Pygmalion) to be a largely accurate portrayal of Sweet in the preface to that play. A bibliography and Collected Papers were published by H. C. Wyld.
Further reading Charles Leslie Wrenn, 'Henry Sweet', Transactions of the Philological Society 46.177-201 (1946) | ||||||||
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