How Fowler became 'The Fowler': an anatomy of a success story

Abstract

“Dictionary of Modern English Usage, short forms Modern English Usage, MEU. The best-known usage manual of the 20C, compiled by H. W. Fowler and published by Oxford University Press in 1926 […]. This work in particular has made the name Fowler as well known among those interested in usage and the language as Johnson and Webster, a point of reference for both those who venerate and those who regret what he has had to say.” (Burchfield, 1992a: 311)If the quotation above is anything to go by, it tells us two things, namely that Fowler's Modern English Usage [MEU] is regarded as the best-known usage manual of the 20th century and that opinions about Fowler are highly controversial. Works like the Fowler Brothers' (1906) The King's English [KE] and Henry W. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) [MEU-1] can be regarded as role models for usage handbooks in Britain. The immense success and popularity, especially of the latter work, with new editions in 1965 (revised by Sir Ernest Gowers) [MEU-2] and in 1996 (further revised by Robert Burchfield) [MEU-3], calls for an explanation. In order to reveal the relationship between authority and success, the present article places MEU and its predecessor KE in their socio-historical contexts and then gives a detailed account of the success story of MEU. It analyses the book's reception in its three editions and its treatment in English-language histories and introductory textbooks to the English language.

Grassroots prescriptivism

“…In point of fact we have our eyes not on the foreigner, but on the half-educated Englishman of literary proclivities who wants to know Can I say so-&-so?, What does this familiar phrase or word mean?, Is this use English? (...) the kind of Englishman who has idioms floating in his head in a jumbled state, & knows it… ( as cited in Burchfield, 1991, p. 96) Usage guides continue to be extremely popular; a study by Busse and Schröder (2008) showed that the numbers of the usage guide publications are steadily on the rise, presumably along with the rising popularity of other guides, self-help and how-to literature.…”

Modern English usage from Britain to America

“…The evolution of Garner's book follows that of Fowler, though edited by three different writers in the course of its history. After the first edition, the second edition (Gowers 1965) remained largely unaltered (Busse & Schröder, 2010: 47), as in the case of Garner2; the third edition introduces a new method of gathering information or evaluation, such as a purpose-built corpus in the case of The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (Burchfield, 1996) and the Language Change Index in Garner3; and the fourth edition then sees an increase in sophistication of this method, as in the use of the Oxford English Corpus in the case of Fowler4 and Google Books in Garner4.…”

“… 8 Although Fowler’s name was not explicitly mentioned in the title, the second edition of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Gowers, 1965) came to be informally referred to as Fowler’s Modern English Usage . By the time the second edition was published, the Dictionary of Modern English Usage had apparently become such an institution that it could simply be referred to as ‘Fowler’ (see for instance Busse & Schröder, 2010, and Tieken–Boon van Ostade, 2018: 2). …”

Of greengrocers, sports commentators, estate agents and television presenters: who’s in a usage guide and why

“…Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) is probably the most iconic of English usage guides (Busse and Schröder 2010). It might be argued that the ultimate recognition of its status came when Fowler was finally admitted as an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED, Online) in September 2017 (OED, s.v.…”