That's Joseph Wright the philologist (1855-1930), not the painter
(Joseph Wright of Derby).

Quite a remarkable life. Born in a Yorkshire village. Donkey-boy,
bobbin-doffer, wool-sorter (a good job). Took night classes, made more
money by teaching other workers.

"By 1876 Wright had saved £40 and could afford a term's study at the
University of Heidelberg. He walked to Heidelberg from Antwerp, a
distance of more than 250 miles (400 km), to save money." (Wiki)

Eventually completed his PhD at Heidelberg under the neo-grammarian
Herman Osthoff. Max Müller got him a job at Oxford, and eventually he
succeeded Müller as Professor of Comparative Philology.

His great work, the English Dialect Dictionary (6 volumes, 1898-1905),
was (like OED), based mainly on written sources, with a lot of volunteer
contributors. (England didn't get a proper dialect survey/atlas project
until after WWII.) It's available online from Internet Archive or the
University of Innsbruck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Wright_(linguist)
https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Wright%2C%20Joseph%2C%201855-1930%22%20dialect%20dictionary%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts
https://eddonline4-proj.uibk.ac.at/edd/

JRR Tolkien knew Wright well at Oxford. A story he told later:

"Years before I had rejected as disgusting cynicism by an old vulgarian
the words of warning given me by old Joseph Wright. "What do you take
Oxford for, lad?" "A university, a place of learning." "Nay, lad, it's a
factory! And what's it making? I'll tell you. It's making fees. Get that
in your head, and you'll begin to understand what goes on." Alas! by
1935 I now knew that it was perfectly true. At any rate as a key to
dons' behaviour." (from Tolkien's published letter)

On 2024-03-01, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

> That's Joseph Wright the philologist (1855-1930), not the painter

His Old High German Primer is my go-to source for all things OHG.
It's available from the Internet Archive, among other places:
https://archive.org/details/oldhighgermanpri00wrigiala/

I would like to own a paper copy, but the ones on sale at Amazon
reek of disreputable attempts to make a quick buck by printing
out-of-copyright books in questionable quality.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On 2024-03-01 19:06:01 +0000, Christian Weisgerber said:

> On 2024-03-01, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
>> That's Joseph Wright the philologist (1855-1930), not the painter
>
> His Old High German Primer is my go-to source for all things OHG.
> It's available from the Internet Archive, among other places:
> https://archive.org/details/oldhighgermanpri00wrigiala/
>
> I would like to own a paper copy, but the ones on sale at Amazon
> reek of disreputable attempts to make a quick buck by printing
> out-of-copyright books in questionable quality.

The one time I bought such a book (An Essay on Combustion, Elizabeth
Fulhame, 1794) I was very pleased with the quality. The publisher's
note warned that some pages might be illegible, but I didn't find any.

--
Athel cb