Joseph Bosworth

Joseph Bosworth was born at Etwall, Derbyshire in 1787 or 1788, third son of Thomas Etwall. He attended Repton School as a “Poor Scholar” – though perhaps only for a short time. It is unclear how he spent the initial years after he left school but he was ordained deacon in 1814, and priest the following year. He served a curacy at Bunny in Northamptonshire and then in 1817 became vicar of Little Horwood in Buckinghamshire, where he stayed for 12 years. In 1819 he married – the first of three marriages as he was twice widowed - but never had any children. In 1822, he was awarded the degree of M.A. by the University of Aberdeen upon the recommendation of three fellow clergymen.

In 1821, he published two very popular school texts on classical Latin, but his real interest lay in Old English and in 1823 he broke new ground with his Elements of Anglo-Saxon grammar, which was the first book of its kind in English. In 1829 Bosworth became Chaplain in the Netherlands where he remained until 1840. His most important work, an Anglo-Saxon dictionary, appeared in 1838, and several other philological studies date from his time in the Netherlands. Back in England and now vicar of Waith in Lincolnshire, he continued with his research and in 1858 he was appointed Rawlinson Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford. He also became Rector of Water Stratford, a position he held for the remainder of his life. He worked systematically from nine until six most days, mainly on preparing a revised version of his dictionary, to be published by the Clarendon Press. This was still unfinished at his death in 1876, but was completed from his notes by Professor Toller and finally appeared in 1882.

Bosworth had a high reputation as a scholar and was awarded degrees by the universities of Aberdeen, Leyden and Cambridge. He was a Fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society, as well as of several foreign learned societies. His various publications earned him large sums (a total of £18,000 was the estimate he himself gave in 1876) and in 1867 he was able to endow a new Chair of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Cambridge with a gift of £10,000.