Francis March

Francis Andrew March ( * October 25, 1825 in Millbury, Massachusetts, † September 9, 1911 in Easton, Pennsylvania) was an American philologist and lexicographer.

Biography

After schooling and education at Amherst College, he studied law in New York City and was admitted to the bar in 1850. After having worked as a teacher for several years, he became in 1857 Professor of English and Comparative Linguistics at Lafayette College in Easton. The local teaching he held for almost fifty years until 1906. In addition, he was 1879-1882 Director of the American editors of the New English Dictionary, the later the Oxford English Dictionary. He was also from 1891 to 1893 President of the Modern Language Association (MLA ).

March can be regarded as founder of comparative Old English language. Among his most famous publications includes not only the monumental work Comparative Grammar of the Anglo - Saxon Language ( 1870) and An Anglo - Saxon Reader (1870 ) and Introduction to Anglo - Saxon: An Anglo - Saxon Reader, with Philological Notes, a letter Grammar, and a Vocabulary.

Works

• Francis Andrew March: Selected writings of the first professor of English, Ed. by Paul and Jane Schlueter, Easton, PA: Friends of Skillman Library, Lafayette College, 2005, ISBN 0-9765162-0-9

External links and sources

• Biography (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911)
• An Address in Commemoration of Francis Andrew March, 1825-1911, Obituary in: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America ( PMLA ), No. 28, 1913
• CHAMBERS Biographical Dictionary, pp. 1004, 2002, ISBN 0-550-10051-2