Robert Burchfield
From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.
Robert William Burchfield (January 27, 1923 - July 5, 2004) was a scholar, writer, and lexicographer.
Born in Wanganui, New Zealand, he studied at Victoria University in Wellington and, later, at Oxford University (Magdalen College) in England on a Rhodes Scholarship, where he was mentored by J.R.R. Tolkien. From 1957 to 1986 he edited the second Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary. Subsequently he produced a controversial, substantially rewritten edition of Modern English Usage, the famous style guide to the English language by Henry Watson Fowler.
He died at the age of 81.
