William Carlos Williams Quick Facts

William Carlos Williams, Pulitzer Prize-winning American physician, poet, short-story writer, novelist and essayist of the 20th-century modernist movement.

Profile

• Full Name: William Carlos Williams
• Birth Name: William Carlos Williams
• Date of Birth: September 17, 1883
• Place of Birth: Rutherford, Bergen County, New Jersey, United States of America
• Zodiac Sign: Virgo
• Date of Death: March 4, 1963
• Died at Age: 79
• Place of Death: Rutherford, Bergen County, New Jersey, United States of America
• Place of Burial: Hillside Cemetery, Lyndhurst, Bergen County, New Jersey, United States of America
• Epitaph:

“William Carlos

1883-1963”

• Cause of Death: Cerebrovascular thrombosis
• Last Words: NA
• Ethnicity: Mixed
• Nationality: American
• Father: William George Williams (1853-1918)
• Mother: Raquel Hélène Rose Hoheb Williams  (Elena) (1856 -1949)
• Siblings:

1. Brother: Edgar Irving Williams (1884-1974)

• Spouse: Florence Hilda Herman Williams (b. 1890-d. 1976) (m. 1912)

• Children:

1. Son: William E. Williams (b. 1914)
2. Son: Paul H. Williams (b. 1917)

• Alma Mater: University of Pennsylvania
• Occupation: Writer, physician
• William Carlos Williams is known for: revolutionizing American poetry by rejecting traditional conventions of rhyme and meter, and using colloquial American English.
• William Carlos Williams is criticized for: frequent delivery of contradictory and confused opinions.
• William Carlos Williams was influenced by: John Keats (1795–1821), Walt Whitman (1819–1892), James Joyce (1882 –1941), Ezra Pound (1885–1972), and Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BC).
• William Carlos Williams’ works inspired: Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), Charles Tomlinson (1927–2015), the Beat movement, the San Francisco Renaissance, the Black Mountain school, and the New York School.
• Literary movement: Modernism, Imagism

Quotes

“The earth cracks and
is shriveled up;
the wind moans piteously;
the sky goes out
if you should fail.”
– William Carlos Williams, Chicory and Daisies [from Al Que Quiere! (1917)]

Awards and Achievements

• Bollingen Prize (1953)
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1963)
• United States Poet Laureate (1952)
• National Book Award for Poetry (1950)
• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Poetry (1963)

Major Literary Works

Poetry

• Poems (1909)
• The Tempers (1913)
• Al Que Quiere! (1917)
• Sour Grapes (1921)
• Spring and All (1923)
• Go Go (1923)
• The Cod Head (1932)
• Collected Poems, 1921-1931 (1934)
• An Early Martyr and Other Poems (1935)
• Adam & Eve & The City (1936)
• The Complete Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, 1906-1938 (1938)
• The Broken Span (1941)
• The Wedge (1944)
• Paterson Book I (1946); Book II (1948); Book III (1949); Book IV (1951); Book V (1958)
• Clouds, Aigeltinger, Russia (1948)
• The Collected Later Poems (1950; rev. ed.1963)
• Collected Earlier Poems (1951; rev. ed., 1966)
• The Desert Music and Other Poems (1954)
• Journey to Love (1955)
• Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962)
• Paterson (Books I-V in one volume, (1963)

Prose

• Kora in Hell: Improvisations (1920)
• The Great American Novel (1923)
• Spring and All (1923)
• In the American Grain (1925)
• A Voyage to Pagany (1928)
• Novelette and Other Prose (1932)
• The Knife of the Times, and Other Stories (1932)
• White Mule (1937)
• Life along the Passaic River (1938)
• In the Money (1940)
• Make Light of It: Collected Stories (1950)
• Autobiography (1951) W. W. Norton & Co. (1 February 1967)
• The Build-Up (1952)
• Selected Essays (1954)
• The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957)
• I Wanted to Write a Poem: The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet (1958)
• Yes, Mrs. Williams: A Personal Record of My Mother (1959)
• The Farmers' Daughters: Collected Stories (1961)
• Imaginations (1970)
• The Embodiment of Knowledge (1974)
• Interviews With William Carlos Williams: "Speaking Straight Ahead" (1976)
• A Recognizable Image: William Carlos Williams on Art and Artists (1978)
• William Carlos Williams: The Doctor Stories: Compiled by Robert Coles (1984)
• Pound/Williams: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams (1996)
• The Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams (1996)
• The Letters of Denise Levertov and William Carlos Williams (1998)
• William Carlos Williams and Charles Tomlinson: A Transatlantic Connection (1998)
• The Humane Particulars: The Collected Letters of William Carlos Williams and Kenneth Burke (2004)

Drama

• Many Loves and Other Plays: The Collected Plays of William Carlos Williams (1962)

Translations

• Last Nights of Paris (1929)
• By Word of Mouth: Poems from the Spanish, 1916-1959 (2011)
• The Dog and the Fever (2018)

 Did You Know?

• Williams was the eldest of the two sons born to William George and Raquel Hélène Rose Hoheb.
• His father was English but raised in the Dominican Republic. His mother was a native of Puerto Rico of half French and half a genetic mixture of Dutch, Spanish, and Jewish extraction.
• Although coincidental, his paternal grandmother’s name was Emily Dickinson, which resembles the name of a prominent American poet.
• His younger brother, Edgar Williams was a renowned architect whose most outstanding designs include Donnell Library Center and the Cooper Hewitt Museum in Manhattan.
• Williams fell in love with Charlotte Herman (Lotte), who ditched him for his younger brother, Edgar. Just three days after the rejection, he proposed to Charlotte’s younger sister, Florence (Flossie), who agreed to marry Williams in future.
• His eldest son followed Williams’ footsteps and became a doctor.
• Williams was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962) in May 1963.
• Even though he had a successful literary career, Williams’ was mainly a physician.
• Surprisingly, being one of the most prolific writers, Williams authored only one medical article which was published in the Archives of Pediatrics in August 1913.
• His father was a businessman, working with advertising. He was a literature enthusiast and introduced his son to literary giants, such as Dante, Shakespeare, and most notably the Bible.
• Williams’ mother was a painter with a degree in art from Paris, who inspired him to paint in his early years.
• At high school, Williams was mostly interested in math and science. However, during this time he also became interested in literature and wrote his first poem as well. 
• In 1902, Williams met Ezra Pound and they became bosom friends. Although they always criticized each other’s poetry, their friendship remained intact until Williams’ demise.
• After meeting Pound, Williams deviated from the conventions of Shakespeare, Keats and Whitman and tended towards imagist poetry.
• Williams attended the Horace Mann School. He did not have to go to college at all since the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania used to admit selected students from reputed schools.
• Having received his medical degree from Pennsylvania in 1906, Williams did internships at both French Hospital and Child's Hospital in New York.
• He went to the University of Leipzig to study paediatrics and upon completion of the course, he started practising paediatrics in Rutherford in 1910.

Media Gallery

Photos

References

Carter, Richard. “William Carlos Williams (1883–1963): physician-writer and “godfather of

avant garde poetry.” The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. 2020. Elsevier Inc. 31 May 2020

<https://www.annalsthoracicsurgery.org/article/S0003-4975(99)00293-3/fulltext>.

 “William Carlos Williams.” Find a Grave. 2020. Find a Grave.

31 May 2020<https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1112/william-carlos-williams>.

“William Carlos Williams.” Poetry Foundation. 2020. Poetry Foundation.

31 May 2020< https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-carlos-williams>.

“William Carlos Williams.” Wikipedia. 2020. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

31 May 2020< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Carlos_Williams >.

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E.E. Cummings Quick Facts

E.E. Cummings, 20th-century American avant-garde poet, essayist, playwright, and painter.

 

 Profile

• Full Name: E. E. Cummings
• Birth Name: Edward Estlin Cummings
• AKA: Edward Estlin "E. E." Cummings; Edward E. Cummings
• Date of Birth: October 14, 1894
• Place of Birth: Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States
• Zodiac Sign: Libra
• Date of Death: September 3, 1962
• Died at Age: 67
• Place of Death: Memorial Hospital, Conway, Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States
• Place of Burial: Forest Hills Cemetery, Jamaica Plain, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States
• Epitaph:

“Edward Estlin Cummings

1894–1962”

• Cause of Death: Stroke
• Last Words: NA
• Ethnicity: White
• Nationality: American
• Father: Edward Cummings (1861-1926)
• Mother: Rebecca Haswell Cummings (formerly Clarke) (1859-1947)
• Siblings:

1. Sister: Elizabeth Cummings Qualey (1901-1980)

• Spouse(s):

1. Elaine Thayer née Orr (1895-c. 1974; m. 1924 to 1924)
2. Anne Minnerly Barton (b. 1898-d. 1970; m. 1929 to 1932)
3. Marion Morehouse (b. 1906-d. 1969 m. 1932 to till his death)

• Children:

1. Daughter: Nancy T. Andrews (1919-2006)

• Alma Mater: Harvard University, Cambridge Latin School
• Occupation: Author
• E. E. Cummings is known for: incorporating innovative style and structure as well as mystical and anarchistic beliefs in his works.
• E. E. Cummings is criticized for: producing works that were sentimental as well as politically naïve.
• E. E. Cummings was influenced by: Amy Lowell (1874 -1925), Gertrude Stein (1874 -1946), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
• E. E. Cummings’ works inspired: Dave Eggers (1970), and Jonathan Safran Foer (1977)
• Literary movement: Modernism

Quotes

“when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because”
– E. E. Cummings, 1 x 1 (1944) no. 26

Awards and Achievements

• Dial Award (1925)
• Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry (1945)
• Harriet Monroe Prize from Poetry magazine (1950)
• Fellowship of American Academy of Poets (1950)
• Guggenheim Fellowship (1951)
• Boston Arts Festival Award (1957)
• Bollingen Prize in Poetry (1958)
• Two-year Ford Foundation grant of $15,000 (1959)
• Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard (1952–1953)
• Special citation from the National Book Award Committee for his Poems, 1923–1954 (1957)

Major Themes

• Love
• Sex
• War
• Childhood
• Nature
• Religion

Major Literary Works

• The Enormous Room (1922)
• Tulips and Chimneys (1923)
• & (1925) (self-published)
• XLI Poems (1925)
• is 5 (1926)
• HIM (1927)
• ViVa (1931)
• CIOPW (1931) (artworks)
• EIMI (1933)
• No Thanks (1935)
• Collected Poems (1938)
• 50 Poems (1940)
• 1 × 1 (1944)
• Santa Claus: A Morality (1946)
• XAIPE: Seventy-One Poems (1950)
• i—six nonlectures (1953)
• Poems, 1923–1954 (1954)
• 95 Poems (1958)
• 73 Poems (1963) (posthumous)
• Fairy Tales (1965)
• Etcetera: The Unpublished Poems (1983)
• Complete Poems, 1904–1962, edited by George James Firmage, Liveright 2008

Major Artworks

• e. cummings Self-Portrait
• Noise Number 13
• Scofield Thayer
• Untitled
• Sound

Did You Know?

• E. Cummings was the eldest of the two children born to Edward Cummings and his wife Rebecca Haswell Cummings.
• His father was a professor of sociology and political science at Harvard University. Subsequently, he left Harvard to become the minister at Old South Church in Boston.
• His mother Rebecca Haswell Clarke was the niece of Susana Haswell Rowson, the author of Charlotte Temple, the first bestseller novel in America.
• When her parents separated, Rebecca changed her last name from Hanson to Clarke, her mother’s maiden name.
• In 1933, Cumming’s younger sister Elizabeth Cummings married Carlton Chester Orlando Qualey (1904-1988), a Carleton College faculty member. The couple had two children namely John and Mary.
• Elizabeth Cummings Qualey’s When I Was a Little Girl (1981) contains memoirs of her childhood which she wrote 30 years ago for her children. In this book, she recounts her life with parents, brother E.E. Cummings, relatives, and friends from school, college and university.
• Cummings’ endeavour of writing dates back to early 1904 when he was under 10 years of age. His parents supported him spontaneously to help to develop his creativity.
• He graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1915 and received a Master of Arts degree from the very university in 1916.
• After his graduation, Cummings served as an ambulance driver in World War I. Later on, he was unjustly imprisoned for three months at a French camp on suspicion of This experience inspired him to write his first book The Enormous Room (1922).
• Failing to release his son through diplomatic channels, Edward Cummings wrote a letter to President Woodrow Wilson. Cummings was finally released on December 19, 1917, and returned to the United States on New Year’s Day 1918.
• Later in July 1918, he was drafted into the U.S. army. He served at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, until the end of the war in 1918.
• In the post-World War I era, spanning between the 1920s and 1930s, he started to live interchangeably in France and the United States, finally settling in New York City.
• In the year 1921, he went to Paris to study art. Cummings also met Pablo Picasso, the famous 20^th-century painter whose work he venerated most.
• During his lifetime Cummings’ book earnings were never lucrative and he always had to remain worried about money. Due to abject financial condition, he continued accepting cheques from his mother even during his 50s.
• Cummings sent his poems in The Dial magazine so frequently that he won the Dial Award for poetry in 1925. The award secured Cummings a sum of $2,000.00 which was equivalent to his full year’s income.
• In 1926, Cummings’ parents encountered a fatal car accident, which instantly killed his father and left his mother severely injured but she did ultimately survive. His father’s demise left a profound impact in his mind and it paved the way for the beginning of a new phase of artistic development. Cummings paid tribute to his father in his poem my father moved through dooms of love.
• Cummings was married thrice, which reportedly include a long-term common-law marriage. He and his first wife, Elaine Orr was involved in an illicit love affair in 1919 while she was still married to Scofield Thayer, Cummings' best friend, mentor, and patron. When Thayer learnt about the relationship he was unruffled. Orr gave birth to Cummings’ only child Nancy on December 20, 1919. When Thayer divorced Orr, she and Cummings got married on March 19, 1924. However, the marriage lasted for less than nine months. He espoused his second wife Anne Minnerly Barton on May 01, 1929, but they got divorced three years later in 1932. Then Cummings met the fashion model and photographer Marion Morehouse. Although Morehouse lived with him till his death, it is still debatable whether they ever formally married.
• Before divorcing Elaine, Thayer took the complete financial responsibility for Elaine and Nancy. But after the divorce, he continued to provide support for Nancy.
• His daughter, Nancy was a poet, writer and artist.
• Until 1948, Nancy thought that Thayer was her biological father, but not Cummings.
• In 1943, Nancy married to Willard Roosevelt, the grandson of the former President Theodore Roosevelt but got separated in the early 50s. In 1954 Nancy married Greek classicist Kevin Andrews, the marriage, however, formally dissolved in 1968.
• At different stages of her life, Nancy used various names such as Nancy Thayer and Nancy Roosevelt. But ultimately she opted to use the name Nancy T. Andrews for the rest of her life. However, in her book Charon’s Daughter (1977), she used her name as “Nancy Cummings de Fôret.” And this is for the first and last time she used her father’s name.
• Initially, Cummings had to self-publish his works since none was interested to publish his works. Even after receiving the Dial Award, Cummings still struggled to manage a publisher. Only in the 1940s and 1950s, his writing style became popular and received critical acclamation.
• Cummings invented an exceptionally unique writing style which no one else followed. He deviated radically from the accepted rules of punctuation, spelling, capitalization and syntax. He even invented weird compound words to create a more subjective style.
• Tulips and Chimneys, Cummings’ first collection of poems, was published in 1923. Although Cummings was satisfied with the overall execution of the book, he was utterly displeased with the publisher as he reduced the book from 152 poems to 86 poems and replaced the “&” in the book title with the word “and”. The deleted poems, however, were published in 1925 under the title “&”.
• Apart from writing poems, novels, plays, and essays, Cummings also created numerous drawings and paintings. His most notable collection of artworks is CIOPW (1931), which contains 27 drawings and 72 paintings.
• At the time of his demise, Cummings was recognized as the second-best American poet after Robert Frost.

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Videos

References

“E. E. Cummings.” Wikipedia. 2020. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

27 May 2020< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings>.

“E. E. Cummings.” Poetry Foundation. 2020. Poetry Foundation.

27 May 2020< https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/e-e-cummings>.

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quick Facts

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an illustrious 19th century American novelist and poet.

Profile

• Birth Name: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• AKA: Henry Longfellow
• Date of Birth: February 27, 1807
• Place of Birth: Portland, Maine, USA
• Zodiac Sign: Pisces
• Date of Death: March 24, 1882
• Died at Age: 75 years
• Place of Death: Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
• Place of Burial: Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
• Cause of Death: Peritonitis
• Ethnicity: White
• Nationality: American
• Father: Stephen Longfellow (1776–1849)
• Mother: Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow (1778–1851)
• Siblings:

1. Eldest Brother: Stephen Wadsworth Longfellow (1805–1850)
2. Younger Sister: Elizabeth Wadsworth Longfellow (1808–1829)
3. Younger Sister: Anne Wadsworth Pierce (1810–1901)
4. Younger Sister: Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow (1814–1901)
5. Younger Sister: Mary Greenleaf (Longfellow) (1816–1901)
6. Younger Sister: Ellen Longfellow (1818–1834)
7. Youngest Brother: Reverend Samuel Longfellow (1819–1892)

• Spouses:

1. Mary Storer Potter (b. 1812–d. 1835; m. 1831 until her demise)
2. Frances Elizabeth Appleton (b. 1817–d. 1861; m. 1843 until her demise)

• Children:

1. Stillborn: - - - (October 5, 1835- October 5, 1835)
2. Son: Charles Appleton Longfellow (1844–1893)
3. Son: Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow (1845–1921)
4. Daughter: Fanny Longfellow (1847–1848)
5. Daughter: Alice Mary Longfellow (1850–1928)
6. Daughter: Edith Dana Longfellow (1853–1915)
7. Daughter: Anne Allegra Longfellow (1855–1934)

• Alma Mater: Bowdoin College
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is known for: composing melodious poems that frequently revolve around mythology and legend.
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is criticized for: mimicking the English Romantic tradition.
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was influenced by: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825), Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg) (1772–1801), E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776 –1822), Johann Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862), Washington Irving (1783–1859), William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), Walt Whitman (1819–1892), and Emily Dickinson (1830 –1886).
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s works inspired: NA
• Awards:

1. Honorary doctorate of laws from Harvard in 1859.

Quotes

“The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Excelsior (1842)

Major Works

• Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique (1833)
• Outre-Mer (1835)
• Voices of the Night (1839)
• Hyperion (1839)
• Ballads and Other Poems (1842)
• Poems on Slavery (1842)
• The Spanish Student (1843)
• Poets and Poetry of Europe (1844)
• The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems (1845)
• Poems (1845)
• The Waif (1846)
• The Estray (1846)
• Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)
• The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)
• Kavanagh (1851)
• The Golden Legend (1851)
• The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
• Poems the "Blue and Gold" edition (1857)
• The Courtship of Miles Standish and Other Poems (1858)
• Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863)
• Household Poems (1865)
• Flower-de-Luce (1866)
• Poetical Works (1866)
• Dante's Divine Comedy (1867)
• The New England Tragedies (1868)
• The Divine Tragedy (1871)
• Christus: A Mystery (1871)
• Three Books of Song (1872)
• Aftermath (1873)
• The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1873)
• Poetical Works, the "Household" edition (1874)
• The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)
• Complete Poetical Works, the "Centennial" edition (1876)
• Poems of Places (1877)
• Keramos and Other Poems (1878)
• Ultima Thule (1880)
• In the Harbor (1882)

Works Did You Know?

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the second of eight children born to Stephen Longfellow and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow.
• Longfellow's father was a lawyer and congressman.
• Longfellow's first wife, Mary Storer Potter, was his childhood friend from Portland.
• Both of his wives died tragically: his first wife died from a miscarriage in 1835, whereas his second wife died in a fire in 1861.
• Longfellow enrolled at Bowdoin College in 1822 along with his eldest brother Stephen.
• Nathaniel Hawthorne was his classmate and lifelong friend.
• After its replacement in 1906, the West Boston Bridge was renamed as Longfellow Bridge.
• In March, 15 2007, the United States Postal Service issued a 39-cent stamp to celebrate the 200th birth anniversary of Longfellow.
• Towards the later years, Longfellow led a very silent and reclusive life.
• He contributed towards the first American translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.
• Although Longfellow was the leading poet of his time, during the early half of the 20^th century his importance diminished and he was considered as a minor poet.
• He is the only American poet for whom a bust was placed in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.
• His first poem was published in the Portland Gazette on November 17, 1820.
• Due to Longfellow’s immense popularity, his face was used by many companies to promote their products.
• The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) occurred during his lifetime.
• He was a professor at Harvard University from 1836 to 1854.
• He was a poet of romantic tradition following many trends of the English Romantic movement.

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Wallace Stevens Quick Facts

Wallace Stevens was a major American poet of the 20^th Century and an important member of the modernist movement in poetry.

Profile

• Birth Name: Wallace Stevens
• Pseudonym: Peter Parasol
• Date of Birth: October 2, 1879
• Place of Birth: Reading, Pennsylvania, United States of America
• Zodiac Sign: Libra
• Date of Death: August 2, 1955
• Height: 6 ft 2 in
• Died at Age: 75
• Place of Death: Hartford, Connecticut, United States of America
• Place of Burial: Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut, United States of America
• Cause of Death: Stomach Cancer
• Ethnicity: White
• Nationality: American
• Father: Garrett Barcalow Stevens (1848-1911)
• Mother: Margaretha Catharine Zeller (1850-1912)
• Siblings:

1. Eldest Brother: Garrett Barcalow Stevens (1877-1937)
2. Younger Brother: John Bergen Stevens (1880-1940)
3. Younger Sister: Elizabeth (Stevens) McFarland (1885-1943)
4. Youngest Sister: Mary Catharine Stevens (1889-1919)

• Spouse: Elsie Viola (Moll) Stevens (m. 1909–1955)(b. 1886–d. 1963)

• Children:

1. Daughter: Holly Bright Stevens (1924–1992)

• Alma Mater: Harvard University, New York Law School
• Wallace Stevens is known for: (a) contrasting the harshness of modern industrialized life with the magnificence of nature (b)employing  superior diction and dignified rhythms.
• Wallace Stevens is criticized for: being too abstract and philosophical.
• Wallace Stevens was influenced by: Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Jules Laforgue, and Walt Whitman.
• Wallace Stevens’ works inspired: James Merrill, Donald Justice, John Ashbery, Mark Strand, and John Hollander.
• Literary Movement: Modernism
• Awards:

1. Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1949)
2. National Book Award for Poetry (1951, 1955)
3. Frost Medal (1951)
4. Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1955)

Quotes

"Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.”
- Steven Wallace, Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Major Works

Poetry

• Harmonium (1923)
• Ideas of Order (1936)
• Owl's Clover (1936)
• The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937)
• Parts of a World (1942)
• Transport to Summer (1947)
• Auroras of Autumn (1950)
• Collected Poems (1954)
• Opus Posthumous (1957)
• The Palm at the End of the Mind (1972)
• Collected Poetry and Prose (1997)

Prose

• The Necessary Angel (essays) (1951)
• Letters of Wallace Stevens, edited by Holly Stevens (1966)

Did You Know?

• Stevens was the second of five children born to Garrett Barcalow Stevens, a successful lawyer and Margaretha Catharine Zeller, a former school teacher.
• It took him seven years to complete his first book of poetry, Harmonium which was published in 1923.
• Although Harmonium is now considered as a seminal work in modern poetry, the volume of its sale was insignificant.
• During his early twenties, he had a short love affair with Sybil Gage Weddle, a beautiful and intellectual young lady with pleasing personality. She is a woman who he memorized for the rest of the life.
• He espoused Elsie Kachel, a beautiful, lower class, ill-educated, and intellectually apathetic woman against his family’s approval. None from his family attended the wedding.
• After encountering opposition against his marriage, Stevens ceased speaking to his father for the rest of his life.
• The marriage was unhappy as Elsie gradually created a gulf between herself and Stevens after the birth of Holly, their only daughter. The couple, however, never divorced.
• Holly edited her father's letters which was published as Letters of Wallace Stevens in 1966.
• His 1954 book, Collected Poems won both a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
• Despite being a contemporary of modernist poets, such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams, Wallace never joined the intellectual circle.
• Stevens enrolled in Harvard as an undergraduate student in 1897 but left the university in 1900 without accomplishing a degree.
• He graduated in law in 1903 from New York Law School and was admitted to the U.S. Bar in 1904.
• He practiced law in different law firms until 1916.
• In 1916, Stevens took a position at Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company.  In 1932 he was appointed Vice President of the company and served there until his demise.
• Wallace Stevens won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955, the year of his death.

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Benjamin Lee Whorf Quick Facts

Benjamin Lee Whorf was a notable American linguist.

Profile

• Birth Name: Benjamin Lee Whorf
• AKA: Benjamin Whorf
• Date of Birth: April 24, 1897
• Place of Birth: Winthrop, Massachusetts, United States
• Zodiac Sign: Taurus
• Date of Death: July 26, 1941
• Died at Age: 44
• Place of Death: Hartford, Connecticut, United States
• Place of Burial: Winthrop Cemetery, Winthrop, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States
• Cause of Death: Cancer
• Ethnicity: White
• Nationality: American
• Father: Harry Church Whorf (1874-1934)
• Mother: Sarah Edna (née Lee) Whorf (1871-1962)
• Siblings:

1. Brother: John Calderwood Whorf (1903-1959), married Vivienne Isabelle Wing (1903-1972) in 1925.
2. Brother: Richard Baker Whorf (1906-1966), married Margaret Harriet Smith (1908-1998) in 1929.

• Spouse: Celia Inez Peckham (M. 1920) (b.1901-d.1997)

• Children:

1. Son- Raymond Ben Whorf (b.1922)
2. Son- Robert Peckham Whorf (b.1924)
3. Daughter- Celia Lee Whorf (b.1930)

• Alma Mater: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Benjamin Whorf is known for: Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, Nahuatl linguistics, allophone, cryptotype,  and Maya script
• Benjamin Lee Whorfis criticized for: NA
• Benjamin Lee Whorf was influenced by: Fabre d'Olivet, Edward Sapir, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, C. K. Ogden, Madame Blavatsky
• Benjamin Lee Whorf’s Works Inspired: George Lakoff, John A. Lucy, Michael Silverstein, Linguistic Anthropology, M.A.K. Halliday, Dell Hymes
• Fields: Linguistics, Anthropology, Fire Prevention

Quotes

"Thinking is most mysterious, and by far the greatest light upon it that we have is thrown by the study of language. This study shows that the forms of a person's thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematizations of his own language—shown readily enough by a candid comparison and contrast with other languages, especially those of a different linguistic family. His thinking itself is in a language—in English, in Sanskrit, in Chinese. And every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness.”

Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings

Major Works

Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings (1956)

Did You Know?

• Benjamin Lee Whorf was the eldest of the three sons born to Harry Church Whorf and Sarah Lee Whorf.
• His father had a predilection for different fields of works, who first worked as a commercial artist and then tended towards playwriting, acting, and theatrical production.
• His younger brother John was an internationally renowned painter and illustrator.
• Whorf’s youngest brother Richard Whorf was an American actor, author, director, and designer.
• Most of his works were published posthumously.
• Although Benjamin Whorf exerted a significant influence in linguistics, he had never pursued career in that field.
• Whorf refused countless research positions and opted to hold on to his career in chemical engineering.
• Since childhood Whorf was an avid reader and he used to read books written on almost any subject.
• Despite he always enjoyed studying language, Whorf finally attained a degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1918.
• In the year 1919, he secured the position of an engineer at the Hartford Fire Insurance Company, where he served until his demise in 1941.
• During the 1920s his interest in linguistics was revived and he corresponded with many renowned scholars of the time to share his ideas.
• In 1931, Whorf enrolled at the Yale University as a part-time, non-degree graduate student and studied under the influential American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir.
• Later on, his study with Sapir paved the way for formulating the concept of the equation of culture and language which is known as Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis.
• In 1937, Whorf started his career as lecturer in Anthropology at University of Yale; however, he left Yale just after a year owing to severe health issues.
• After ending his teaching career at Yale, he continued writing and researching until the last day of his life.

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Dell Hymes Quick Facts

Dell Hymes, an influential sociolinguist, anthropologist, and folklorist.

Profile

• Birth Name: Dell Hathaway Hymes
• AKA: Dell Hymes; Dell H. Hymes
• Date of Birth: June 7, 1927
• Place of Birth: Portland, Oregon, USA
• Zodiac Sign: Gemini
• Date of Death: November 13, 2009
• Died at Age: 82
• Place of Death: Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
• Place of Burial: NA
• Cause of Death: Kidney failure & Alzheimer’s disease
• Ethnicity: White
• Nationality: American
• Father: Howard Hathaway
• Mother: Dorothy (née Bowman) Hymes
• Siblings:

1. Brother: Corwin Hymes

• Spouse:

1. Virginia (née Dosch) Wolff (m. 1954)

• Children:

1. Daughter- Vicky (Wolff) Unruh (by Virginia’s first marriage) (spouse: David)
2. Son - Robert Paul Wolff Hymes (by Virginia’s first marriage) (spouse: Debora Worth)
3. Daughter- Alison Bowman Hymes
4. Son- Kenneth Dell Hymes (spouse: Leisl Patton Hymes)

• Alma Mater: Reed College; Indiana University.
• Dell Hymes is known for: pioneering the connection between speech and human relations and human understandings of the world.
• Dell Hymes is criticized for: NA
• Dell Hymes was influenced by: Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, Harry Hoijer, Roman Jakobson, Erving Goffman, Ray L. Birdwhistell, and Harold Garfinkel, Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson.
• Dell Hymes’s Works Inspired: Richard Bauman, Henry Glassie, and Lee Haring.
• Research Interests: Anthropology, Native American mythology, ethnopoetics.

Career History

• Hymes' first faculty position was at the Harvard University where he remained five years.
• In 1960, he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley and served there for five years.
• Dr. Hymes joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty in 1965 as professor of folklore and linguistics and of anthropology.
• From 1975 to 1987, he served as the dean of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.
• He left Pennsylvania in 1987 to serve on the faculty at the University of Virginia in both the anthropology and English departments. He retired from Pennsylvania in 1998 as an emeritus professor.

Quotes

"We have then to account for the fact that a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences not only as grammatical, but also as appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner. In short, a child becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take part in speech events, and to evaluate their accomplishment by others. This competence, moreover, is integral with attitudes, values, and motivations concerning language, its features and uses, and integral with competence for, and attitudes toward, the interrelation of language with the other code of communicative conduct."- Dell Hymes, “On communicative competence”

“The specification of ability for use as part of competence allows for the role of non cognitive factors, such as motivation, as partly determining competence. In speaking of competence, it is especially important not to separate cognitive from affective and volitive factors, so far as the impact of the theory on educational practice is concerned; but also with regard to speech design and explanation” - Dell Hymes, “On communicative competence”

"The concept of performance will take on great importance, in so far as the study of communicative competence is seen as an aspect of what from another angle may be called the ethnography of symbolic forms, the study of the variety of genres, narration, dance, drama, song, instrumental music, visual art, that interrelate with speech in the communicative life of a society and in terms of which the relative importance and meaning of speech and language must be assessed - Dell Hymes, “On communicative competence”

Major Works

Language in Culture and Society: A Reader in Linguistics and Anthropology (1964)
"In Vain I Tried to Tell You": Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics (1981)
Reinventing anthropology (1972)
Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality: Toward an Understanding of Voice (1996)
Now I Know Only So Far (2003)
American Structuralism (1975)
Breakthrough Into Performance (1973)
Essays in the History of Linguistic Anthropology (1983)
Language in Education: Ethnolinguistic Essays (1980)
The use of computers in anthropology (1965)
On Noam Chomsky: Critical Essays (1974)
Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach (1974)

Did You Know?

• Between 1944 to 1945 Hymes attended public schools in Oregon.
• After one year of his enrollment at Reed College, Hymes joined the army and served two years as clerk in South Korea during the World War II.
• After the war he returned to Reed in 1947 and studied under legendary anthropology professor David French and his wife Kay Story French.
• In 1950, Hymes earned his bachelor’s degree in literature and anthropology from Reed College.
• He earned his Ph.D. in linguistics from Indiana University in 1955.
• He coined the term “Communicative competence” in reaction to Noam Chomsky’s (1965) concept of “linguistic competence”.
• He postulated the SPEAKING Model.
• He was one of the first to call the fourth subfield of anthropology "linguistic anthropology" instead of "anthropological linguistics".
• He served as the president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1982, of the American Anthropological Association in 1983, and of the American Folklore Society.
• In 1972, Hymes founded the journal Language in Society and served as its editor for 22 years.
• In 2006, he was awarded the Gold Medal of Philology.
• Hymes’ first marriage was a failure and ended in divorce.
• He got married for the second time in 1954 to Virginia Dosch Wolff.
• Hymes and Virginia were married for 55 years until his death in 2009.
• Hymes adopted Virginia’s two children by her first marriage.
• His wife, Virginia Hymes, was also a sociolinguist and folklorist.
• Like Hymes, Virginia went on to work for more than half a century on Native American cultures and languages.
• It is alleged that during his tenure at the University of Pennsylvania he was involved in sexually harassing a number of women.
• In 1981, Hymes published his seminal work, 'In Vain I Tried to Tell You': Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics.
• Hymes is best known for his pioneering work in ethnopoetics.

Photographs

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Michael Halliday Quick Facts

Michael Halliday is a British linguist and teacher.

Profile

• Birth Name: Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday
• AKA: M.A.K. Halliday
• Date of Birth: 13 April 1925
• Place of Birth: Leeds, Yorkshire, England
• Zodiac Sign: Aries
• Date of Death: 15 April 2018
• Died at Age: 93
• Place of Death: Sydney, Australia
• Place of Burial: NA
• Cause of Death: Natural causes
• Ethnicity: White
• Nationality: British
• Father: Wilfred Halliday
• Mother: Winifred Halliday  née Kirkwood
• Spouse(s):

1. Trenchu Wong (m. 1947)
2. Irene (‘Pat’) Woolf (m. 1952)
3. Anne McLaren
4. Brenda Stephen (m. 1961)
5. Ruqaiya Hasan (1931–2015) (m. 1967)

• Children:

1. By Woolf: Son- Andrew Daughter- Polly
2. By Ruqaiya Hasan: Son - Neil
3. By Anne McLaren: Daughter- Caroline
4. By Brenda Stephen: Daughter- Clare

• Alma Mater: University of London; Peking University; University of Cambridge.
• Michael Halliday is Known for: developing Systemic Functional Linguistics
• Michael Halliday is criticized for: NA
• Michael Halliday was influenced by: Vilém Mathesius (Prague school) Wang Li, J.R. Firth, Benjamin Lee Whorf
• Michael Halliday’s Works Inspired: Ruqaiya Hasan, C.M.I.M. Matthiessen, J.R. Martin, Norman Fairclough

Career History

• 1954–1958: Assistant Lecturer in Chinese, Cambridge University
• 1958–1963:Lecturer in General Linguistics and Reader, University of Edinburgh
• 1963–1970: Director of Communication Research Center, University College, London
• 1964: Linguistic Society of America Professor, Indiana University
• 1965–971: Professor of Linguistics, UCL
• 1972–1973: Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University
• 1973–1974: Professor of Linguistics, University of Illinois
• 1974-1975: Professor of Language and Linguistics, Essex University
• 1976–1987: Foundation Professor of Linguistics, University of Sydney
• 1988: Emeritus Professor of University of Sydney

Membership

• Philological Society (United Kingdom)
• Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States
• Linguistic Society of America
• Australian Linguistics Society.
• Applied Linguistics Association of Australia

Quotes

“It is part of the task of linguistics to describe texts, and all texts, including those prose or verse, which fall within any definition of literature and are accessible to analysis by the existing methods of linguistics.” - Michael Halliday, The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching

Major Works

The linguistic sciences and language teaching (1964)
Intonation and Grammar in British English (1967)
A course in spoken English (1970)
Explorations in the functions of language (1973)
Language and Social Man (1974)
Learning how to Mean: Explorations in the Development of Language (1975)
Halliday: System and Function in Language: Selected Papers (1976)
Cohesion in English (1976)
Language as a Social Semiotic (1978)
Lexical Cohesion (1979)
Readings in Systemic Linguistics (1981)
Learning Asian Languages (1986)
An Introduction to Functional Grammar (1985)
Spoken and Written Language (1985)
New Developme5nts in Systemic Linguistics: Theory and application (1988)
Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-semiotic Perspective (1985)
Writing science (1993)
Discourse in Society: Systemic Functional Perspectives (1995)
Construing Experience through Meaning (1999)
On language and linguistics (2003)
The Language of Early Childhood (2002)
On grammar (2002)
The Language of Science (2000)
Linguistic Studies of Text and Discourse (2002)
Computational and Quantitative Studies (2004)
Lexicology and Corpus Linguistics (2004)
Studies in Chinese Language (2005)
Language and Society (2007)
Language and Education (2007) 
Lexicology: A Short Introduction (2007)
Intonation in the Grammar of English (2008)
The Essential Halliday (2009)
Halliday in the 21st Century (2013)
Aspects of Language and Learning (2016)
Text Linguistics: The how and why of Meaning (2014)
An Introduction to Relational Network Theory: History, Principles, and Descriptive Applications (2017)
Verbal Art and Verbal Science: The Chess Moves of Language (2018)

Did You Know?

• Michael Halliday’s father, Wilfred Halliday, was a dialectologist, an English teacher and a poet of the Yorkshire dialect, having deep predilection for grammar and Elizabethan drama.
• His mother, Winifred Kirkwood, was a French teacher; during the First World War she held the position of Editor of The Gryphon, the official newspaper of the University of Leeds.
• Halliday attained a B.A. in Chinese language and literature from the University of London.
• He completed postgraduate work in linguistics, first at Peking University and later at the University of Cambridge.
• Michael Halliday obtained his Ph.D. in 1955 from Peking University.
• Halliday has honorary doctorates from University of Birmingham (1987), York University (1988), the University of Athens (1995), Macquarie University (1996), Lingnan University (1999) and Beijing Normal University (2011).
• Michael Halliday founded the Department of Linguistics at the University of Sydney in 1976.
• While serving at the University of Sydney, Halliday founded the Sydney School.
• After his retirement from the University of Sydney in 1987 he became the Emeritus Professor in the same university.
• The Department of Linguistics of the University of Sydney honoured Halliday with the founding of the Halliday Medal upon his retirement; in 2014, Halliday presented the award personally at the School of Literature, Art and Media’s prize-giving ceremony.
• Halliday’s works particularly concerned with applying the understanding of the basic principles of language to the theory and practices of education.
• Halliday married several times in his life.
• Halliday has four grandchildren: Bianca, Nicole, Rhona and Cameron.
• After the demise of his beloved wife, Ruqaiya Hasan in 2015, he suffered terribly from the loss.
• He died at Uniting Wesley Heights Nursing Home in Manly, New South Wales, Australia.

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Richard Hudson Quick Facts

Richard Hudson is a British linguist and a retired professor.

Profile

• Birth Name: Richard Anthony Hudson
• AKA: Richard Anthony "Dick" Hudson; Richard (Dick) Hudson;  Dick Hudson; Richard Hudson
• Date of Birth: September, 18 1939
• Place of Birth: Sussex, England, United Kingdom
• Zodiac Sign: Virgo
• Ethnicity: White
• Nationality: British
• Father: John Pilkington Hudson (1910 – 2007)
• Mother: Gretta Hudson née Heath (1910-1989)
• Siblings: 2

1. Brother-John Colin Hudson (1938 – 2004)
2. Brother- George Bryan Stephens Heath

• Spouse: Gaynor Evans

• Children: 2

1. Daughter - Lucy
2. Daughter-  Alice

• Alma Mater: Loughborough Grammar School, Leicestershire; Corpus Christi College; Cambridge, School of Oriental and African Studies
• Richard Hudson is known for: his theory of Word Grammar.

Quotes

“Sociolinguists don’t set out to produce Grand Theories, so there are no schools of sociolinguistics. They’re also very self-critical on matters of method and data, and are forever wishing that their sociology was better. There are theories, but most sociolinguists are rather down-to-earth people with rather practical concerns and not much time for theory. At this stage in its development the subject probably has the right priorities—mainly collecting and cataloguing fairly low-level data.” - Richard Hudson, Interview with Richard Hudson by Joseph Hilferty

Major Works

English Complex Sentences: An Introduction to Systematic Grammar (1971)
Arguments for a Non-Transformational Grammar (1976)
Sociolinguistics (1980)
Word Grammar (1984a)
Introduction to Linguistics (1984b)
English Word Grammar (1990)
Teaching Grammar: A Guide for the National Curriculum (1992)
Word Meaning (1995)
English Grammar (1998)
Language Networks: The New Word Grammar (2007)
An Introduction to Word Grammar (2010)
Oxford Teaching Guides: How to Teach Grammar (2019)

Did You Know?

• Richard Hudson is the second child born to John Pilkington Hudson and Mary Gretta Hudson.
• His father was a horticulturalist and bomb-disposal officer.
• Apart from staying in New Zealand from 1945 to 1948, he has lived in England for most of his life.
• At present Hudson resides in North London.
• He joined University College London in 1970 and spent the whole of his working life there as Lecturer, Reader then Professor of Linguistics.
• Although retired in 2004, at present he holds the position of an Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at University College London.
• He is a Fellow of the British Academy.
• Hudson did his doctoral thesis on the grammar of Beja, a Semitic language spoken in north-eastern Africa.
• His 1980 publication, Sociolinguistics is considered as a classic book in the field of Sociolinguistics.
• Professor Hudson has done wide-ranging work in the area of syntax.

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Ronald Wardhaugh Quick Facts

Ronald Wardhaugh is a Canadian retired professor of linguistics.

 

Profile

Full Name: Ronald Wardhaugh
Date of Birth: 1932
Place of Birth: Canada
Nationality: Canadian
Ethnicity: White
Known for: his book An Introduction to Sociolinguistics

Major Works

• English for a Changing World Level 1 (1984)
• How Conversation Works (1985)
• An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (1986)
• Reading: A Linguistic Perspective (1969)
• Introduction to Linguistics (1971)
• The Contexts of Language (1976)
• Investigating Language (1993)
• Language and Nationhood  (1983)
• Languages in Competition: Dominance, Diversity, and Decline (1987)
• Understanding English Grammar (1995)
• Proper English: Myths and Misunderstandings about Language (1999)

Quotes

“When two or more people communicate with each other in speech, we can call the system of communication that they employ a code. In most cases that code will be something we may also want to call a language.”

― Ronald Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics

“… sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating the relationships between language and society with the goal being a better understanding of the structure of language and of how languages function in communication; the equivalent goal in the sociology of language is trying to discover how social structure can be better understood through the study of language, e.g., how certain linguistic features serve to characterize particular social arrangements.”
― Ronald Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics

“While people do usually know what language they speak, they may not always lay claim to be fully qualified speakers of that language. They may experience difficulty in deciding whether what they speak should be called a language proper or merely a dialect of some language.”
― Ronald Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics

“Taboo is the prohibition or avoidance in any society of behavior believed to be harmful to its members in that it would cause them anxiety, embarrassment, or shame. It is an extremely strong politeness constraint. Consequently, so far as language is concerned, certain things are not to be said or certain objects can be referred to only in certain circumstances, for example, only by certain people, or through deliberate circumlocutions, i.e., euphemistically. Of course, there are always those who are prepared to break the taboos in an attempt to show their own freedom from such social constraints or to expose the taboos as irrational and unjustified, as in certain movements for ‘free speech.’”

― Ronald Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics

Did you know?

• Ronald Wardhaugh held the position of professor from 1975 to 1995 in the Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto.
• Wardhaugh served in various capacities, such as Assistant Professor (1966 to 1968), Associate Professor (1968 to 1972), and Professor of Linguistics (1972 to 1975) in the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
• He held the position of Chairman in the Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto from 1975 to 1986.
• In 1995 the University of Toronto conferred him the position of Emeritus Professor.
• His book  An Introduction To Sociolinguistics (1986) has been widely deemed to be the most resourceful and comprehensive work on sociolinguistic literature.

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Peter Roach Quick Facts

Peter Roach (b.1943) is a British phonetician.

Profile

Birth Name: Peter John Roach
AKA: Peter Roach
Date of Birth: June 30, 1943
Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
Zodiac Sign: Cancer
Nationality: British
Ethnicity: White
Marital Status: Married
Spouse: Helen (m. 1966)
Children:

• Son: Sam
• Son: Matt

Peter Roach is known for: his works on phonetics.
Alma Mater:

• School: Priory Grammar School, Shrewsbury
• Graduation: Oxford (Brasenose College)
• Post Graduation: Manchester University; University College London

Quotes

“Languages have different accents: they are pronounced differently by people from different geographical places, from different social classes, of different ages and different educational backgrounds. The word accent is often confused with dialect. We use the word dialect to refer to a variety of a language which is different from others not just in pronunciation but also in such matters as vocabulary, grammar and word order. Differences of accent, on the other hand, are pronunciation differences only.” – Peter Roach, English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course

Major Books

1992: Computing in Linguistics and Phonetics, ed. Roach, Peter
2001: Phonetics
2009: English Phonetics and Phonology
2011: The Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary by Daniel Jones, ed. Roach, P., Esling, J. and Setter, J.

Did you know?

• In 1968 Peter Roach was appointed to the Linguistic Science Department of the University of Reading as a lecturer and taught phonetics there till 1978.
• Roach attained his PhD while working in the University of Reading.
• He then joined the University of Leeds as Senior Lecturer in Phonetics in the Department of Linguistics & Phonetics.
• From 1986 to 1992 Roach was the Secretary of the International Phonetic Association.
• Roach moved to the Department of Psychology at Leeds University and was appointed as Professor of Cognitive Psychology.
• In 1994 Roach returned to the University of Reading as Professor of Phonetics and Director of the Speech Research Laboratory.
• At the University of Reading he was the Head of the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies for four years.
• Upon his retirement in September 2003 from the University of Reading, Roach was conferred the Emeritus Professor title of Phonetics.
• He is an author of nearly 70 publications.
• His book English Phonetics and Phonology has been widely considered as one of the most practical and comprehensive text in the field of phonetics.
• Roach is an old car enthusiast.
• Although retired, now Roach spends much time in correcting the phonetic entries on Wikipedia.

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