The Northern Element in English Literature

by William A. Craigie

In 1931, Sir William Craigie gave the Alexander Lectures in English at the University of Toronto entitled The Northern Element in English Literature with a focus on proving the existence of a Northern literary culture, comparing English literature with Northern literature, especially that of the Scottish and Scandinavians. The book is divided into four lectures.

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Sir William Alexander Craigie was a Scottish philologist and a lexicographer.

A graduate of the University of St Andrews, he was the third editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and co-editor (with C.T. Onions) of the 1933 supplement. From 1916 to 1925 he was also Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford.

He lectured on lexicography at the University of Chicago while working on the Dictionary of American English and the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, a project he pioneered. Many twentieth-century American lexicographers studied under Craigie as a part of his lectureship, including Clarence Barnhart, Jess Stein, Woodford A. Heflin, Robert Ramsey, Louise Pound, and Allen Walker Read.