Joseph Wright

Joseph Wright (1855–1930) was an English philologist whose life story became legendary. Born near Bradford in Yorkshire, he went to work as a child in a woolen mill and taught himself to read in his teens. He later studied in Germany, took a doctorate at Heidelberg and became professor of comparative philology at Oxford. His great achievement was the English Dialect Dictionary (1898–1905), in six volumes, which he partly financed himself, together with the English Dialect Grammar. He also wrote primers and grammars of Gothic, Old and Middle High German, Old English and other early Germanic languages that were used by generations of students.