Routledge Revivals: The Selected Works of Eric Partridge
4 total works
First published in 1949 (this edition in 1968), this book is a dictionary of the past, exploring the language of the criminal and near-criminal worlds. It includes entries from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, as well as from Britain and America and offers a fascinating and unique study of language. The book provides an invaluable insight into social history, with the British vocabulary dating back to the 16th century and the American to the late 18th century. Each entry comes complete with the approximate date of origin, the etymology for each word, and a note of the milieu in which the expression arose.
First published in 1940, this book was designed by Eric Partridge to equip students, studying for final exams at school, with the tools they needed to become successful précis-ers. The selection of literary pieces is more diverse than other preìcis books of the time and Partridge’s background as a schoolmaster, a lecturer and a publisher sets him up well to teach the subject.
First published in 1933 (this edition in 1939), this book sees Partridge introducing the reader to the eccentric lexicographers Wesley and Captain Grose. In an entertaining way, the book jovially explores and discusses various words and phrases such as "bloody", euphemisms, the Devil's nicknames, various versions of slang, and familiar terms of address. He does so with light-worn learning making the book of interest to a whole variety of readers.
First published in 1961, this book explores the form of the comic alphabet. Whether through poems, prose or phonetics, the alphabet has become a way in which mankind has taken pleasure in playing with words and phrases. Indeed, approaches can vary significantly from the almost moronically humorous to the ingenious and genuinely witty and this book looks at the reasons how and why the comic alphabet came to possess the arguably sophisticated form in which people know it today.