Auteur: H. W. Fowler

Henry Watson Fowler was a shy, reclusive scholar, a modest and gentle man who lived alone, hermit-like, in a one-room cottage on the island of Guernsey, about fifty yards from the home of his brother Francis. Each worked in solitude, first as translators, subsequently as grammarians. Henry characterized himself and his brother, both former teachers, as “two nobodies, ” who would be thought presumptuous to point out errors of well-known authors and who probably should remain anonymous. After his brother’s death in 1918, Henry completed the monumental Modern English Usage (1926), which has established authority in matters of usage throughout the English-speaking world.