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Eric Valentine Gordon | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1896-02-14)14 February 1896 Salmon Arm, British Columbia, Canada |
| Died | 29 July 1938(1938-07-29) (aged 42)[1] Manchester, England |
| Education | |
| Known for | Pioneering research onOld Norse |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Germanic philology |
| Institutions | |
Eric Valentine Gordon (14 February 1896 – 29 July 1938) was a Canadianphilologist, known as an editor of medievalGermanic texts and a teacher of medieval Germanic languages at theUniversity of Leeds and theUniversity of Manchester.[2]
Gordon was born on Valentine's Day, 1896, on a frontier ranch inSalmon Arm, British Columbia, the third child ofAnnie McQueen Gordon, a Presbyterian Scot and a teacher, and her husband Jim; they nicknamed Eric "Dal".[3]: 157
At first, Dal was educated by his mother,[3]: 214 but a move to Victoria at the age of eleven enabled him to attendVictoria College, British Columbia. In 1915 he was one of the eight CanadianRhodes Scholars, in his case studying atUniversity College, Oxford. He joined the Canadian Field Artillery in 1916 but was discharged for medical reasons (probably asthma). He worked for the rest of the First World War for the Ministries of National Service and of Food.[3]: 229–30 He also attendedMcGill University.[4]
Returning to Oxford in 1919, Gordon took a second-classBA in 1920, partly under the tutelage ofJ. R. R. Tolkien. He began aB Litt degree at Oxford. However, a job opportunity in the English Department at theUniversity of Leeds came up.[3]: 230–31 As the head of department,George S. Gordon wrote to D. Nichol Smith on 18 October 1922, "I am overwhelmed here with students, and have now an Honours School of nearly 120 [...] A committee has been appointed to see what an be done to find me Seminar accommodation, and I am urged to an increase of staff". On 29 October, he continued: "Tolkien suggested a graduate called Gordon,—at present B-Litting. His name is a disadvantage, but we could get over that".[5] E. V. Gordon abandoned his B Litt to take up the position at Leeds.[citation needed]
Gordon worked at Leeds from 1922 to 1931, introducing first Old Norse and later modern Icelandic to the curriculum. While at Leeds, he wrote hisAn Introduction to Old Norse (first published 1927) and collaborated with Tolkien, who worked at Leeds from 1920 to 1925, particularly on their edition ofSir Gawain and the Green Knight (first published 1925).[3]: 229–30 After Gordon arrived at Leeds, Tolkien wrote in his diary "Eric Valentine Gordon has come and got firmly established and is my devoted friend and pal."[6] It appears he worked hard at Leeds: in termtime 1923 he was teaching around fifteen hours per week;[7] in one letter of May 1930 he claimed to have worked one hundred and five hours in a single week (admittedly while excusing himself from taking on a new task).[8]
Gordon was promoted to a Professorship of English Language in 1926 following Tolkien's departure and oversaw the University Library's acquisition of the library ofBogi Thorarensen Melsteð, establishing the library as one of the world's best Icelandic collections.[9][4] Accordingly, for his services to Icelandic culture, Gordon was made a Knight of theRoyal Icelandic Order of the Falcon in 1930.[10]
With Tolkien, Gordon also began theViking Club. In this club they readOld Icelandicsagas (and drink beer) with students and faculty, and invented originalAnglo-Saxon songs.[3]: 231 A collection of these was privately published as the bookSongs for the Philologists. Most of the printed copies were destroyed in a fire and only about 14 are said to exist.[11]
Gordon was active in theYorkshire Dialect Society, and in 1930 he, with Leeds's Professor of FrenchPaul Barbier, was a founder member of theYorkshire Society for Celtic Studies, joining its executive committee and pledging £10 over ten years towards the endowment of a lectureship in Celtic Studies at Leeds University.[12][13] On Gordon's departure from Leeds, he was succeeded byBruce Dickins. Among Gordon's best Leeds students were the scholarsAlbert Hugh Smith (whom Gordon gave his notes towards an aborted study of East Yorkshire place-names, which Smith went on to complete);[14] J. A. Thompson, the translator of Halldór Laxness's classic novelIndependent People;[15] Stella Marie Mills, who went on to work at theOxford English Dictionary;[16] andIda Lilian Pickles,[17][failed verification] whom he married in 1930. Together they had four children (the eldest of whom, Bridget Mackenzie, went on to lecture in Old Norse at Glasgow University);[18] Tolkien composed them a longOld English praise-poem in the Old Norsedrottkvætt-metre, entitledBrýdleop, as a wedding present.[19]
In 1931, Gordon was made Smith Professor of English Language and Germanic Philology at theUniversity of Manchester where his research focused on Old and Middle English. Among his students wasA. R. Taylor, who later succeeded Gordon at Leeds.[20] He died unexpectedly in 1938 of complications following an operation to remove gallstones. After his death, Gordon's widow Ida took on a number of his teaching duties at Manchester, finishing and posthumously publishing a number of his works, before retiring in 1968.
An extensive bibliography of Gordon's publications can be found inTolkien the Medievalist, edited byJane Chance (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 273–74.
In 2014, the estate of Gordon's eldest daughter Bridget Mackenzie sold a collection of letters to the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds, written variously to Gordon, his wife Ida and Mackenzie byJ. R. R. Tolkien.[21][22] Mackenzie passed Ida and Eric Gordon's books toSt Andrews University Library.[23]
