Sir William Alexander Craigie (13 August 1867 – 2 September 1957) was aphilologist and alexicographer.
A graduate of theUniversity of St Andrews, he was the third editor of theOxford English Dictionary and co-editor (withC. T. Onions) of the 1933 supplement. From 1916 to 1925 he was alsoRawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in theUniversity of Oxford. Among the students he tutored,[citation needed] was the one who would succeed him in the Anglo-Saxon chair,J. R. R. Tolkien. He married Jessie Kinmond Hutchen of Dundee (born 1864–65; died 1947) daughter of William.[1]
In 1925, Craigie accepted a professorship in English literature from theUniversity of Chicago, with plans to edit a new American English dictionary, based on the Oxford model.[2] He also lectured on lexicography at Chicago, while working on theDictionary of American English and theDictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, a project he pioneered. Many twentieth-century American lexicographers studied under Craigie as a part of his lectureship, includingClarence Barnhart, Jess Stein, Woodford A. Heflin, Robert Ramsey,Louise Pound, andAllen Walker Read. Cragie retired toWatlington, England in 1936.[3] He was elected an International member of theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1942.[4]
Craigie was also fluent inIcelandic and an expert in the field ofrímur (rhyming epic poems). He made many valuable contributions in that field. His interest was awakened by a winter of study in Copenhagen, then the centre of Norse philology. He compiled the complete Oxford edition ofHans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, with previously untranslated tales being supplied by his wife.[5] He befriended many of the great Norse philologists of the time and came across séra Einar Guðmundsson's seventeenth-century Skotlands rímur, dealing with theGowrie Conspiracy.[6][7][8] He continued research in that field until the end of his life.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
 | This article about a Scottish writer, poet or playwright is astub. You can help Wikipedia byadding missing information. |
.svg)  | This biography of a British linguist is astub. You can help Wikipedia byadding missing information. |
