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Henry Hitchings
Henry Hitchings FRSL (born 11 December 1974) is an author, reviewer and critic, specializing in narrative non-fiction, with a particular emphasis on language and cultural history. The second of his books, The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, won the 2008 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. He has written two books about Samuel Johnson and has served as the president of the Johnson Society of Lichfield. As a critic, he has mainly written about books and theatre. He was chair of the drama section of the UK's Critics' Circle from 2018 to 2020.
He was a King's Scholar at Eton College, before going to Christ Church, Oxford, and then to University College London to research his PhD on Samuel Johnson.
In 2005, Hitchings published Dr Johnson's Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World, a biography of Samuel Johnson's epochal A Dictionary of the English Language (1755). The first popular account of Dr Johnson's magnum opus, it "charts the struggle and ultimate triumph of one of the first attempts to 'fix' the language, which despite its imperfections proved to be one of the English language's most significant cultural monuments".
Avoiding the more usual portrayal of Dr Johnson as "a lovable eccentric", Hitchings "keeps drawing attention to the unremitting intelligence that Johnson's lexicographical labours demanded, not least in separating out the ramifying senses of common words". Whilst declaring, "Hitchings's task is to rescue Johnson from Boswell's attentions," Will Self pointed out, "The Johnson of the Dictionary was never known to Boswell, and as the older man was ill-disposed to animadvert on his younger self, Boswell got such basics as the great man's working methods on the Dictionary glaringly wrong. Not so Hitchings."
The American edition was titled Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr Johnson's Dictionary.
In the United States, Defining the World won the Modern Language Association's prize for the best work by an independent scholar in 2005.
In April 2008, Hitchings published The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, a study of loanwords, calques and their cultural significance. Following the English language's history through "its debt to invasions, to threats from abroad, and to an island people's dealings with the world beyond its shores" the book examines its unbroken acquisitiveness—"but for all that [Hitchings'] true object is to reveal past frames of mind and to show how our present outlook is informed by the history squirreled away in the words we use". Instead of using history to explain language, Hitchings "picks words apart to find their origins" and then molds this "mountain of dense information into an elegant narrative". The Economist noted that "whatever is hybrid, fluid and unpoliced about English delights him".
The book was published in America under the same title the following September.
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Henry Hitchings
Henry Hitchings FRSL (born 11 December 1974) is an author, reviewer and critic, specializing in narrative non-fiction, with a particular emphasis on language and cultural history. The second of his books, The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, won the 2008 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. He has written two books about Samuel Johnson and has served as the president of the Johnson Society of Lichfield. As a critic, he has mainly written about books and theatre. He was chair of the drama section of the UK's Critics' Circle from 2018 to 2020.
He was a King's Scholar at Eton College, before going to Christ Church, Oxford, and then to University College London to research his PhD on Samuel Johnson.
In 2005, Hitchings published Dr Johnson's Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World, a biography of Samuel Johnson's epochal A Dictionary of the English Language (1755). The first popular account of Dr Johnson's magnum opus, it "charts the struggle and ultimate triumph of one of the first attempts to 'fix' the language, which despite its imperfections proved to be one of the English language's most significant cultural monuments".
Avoiding the more usual portrayal of Dr Johnson as "a lovable eccentric", Hitchings "keeps drawing attention to the unremitting intelligence that Johnson's lexicographical labours demanded, not least in separating out the ramifying senses of common words". Whilst declaring, "Hitchings's task is to rescue Johnson from Boswell's attentions," Will Self pointed out, "The Johnson of the Dictionary was never known to Boswell, and as the older man was ill-disposed to animadvert on his younger self, Boswell got such basics as the great man's working methods on the Dictionary glaringly wrong. Not so Hitchings."
The American edition was titled Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr Johnson's Dictionary.
In the United States, Defining the World won the Modern Language Association's prize for the best work by an independent scholar in 2005.
In April 2008, Hitchings published The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, a study of loanwords, calques and their cultural significance. Following the English language's history through "its debt to invasions, to threats from abroad, and to an island people's dealings with the world beyond its shores" the book examines its unbroken acquisitiveness—"but for all that [Hitchings'] true object is to reveal past frames of mind and to show how our present outlook is informed by the history squirreled away in the words we use". Instead of using history to explain language, Hitchings "picks words apart to find their origins" and then molds this "mountain of dense information into an elegant narrative". The Economist noted that "whatever is hybrid, fluid and unpoliced about English delights him".
The book was published in America under the same title the following September.