Letter from Eric Partridge to Alan George Delgado

The collection consists of one letter from Eric Partridge to Alan George Delgado, 20 Dec 1976.

Eric Honeywood Partridge (1894-1979), author and lexicographer, was born in New Zealand, and was the son of John Thomas Partridge, grazier, and his wife Ethel Norris. In 1907 the family moved to Brisbane, Australia, where Partridge was educated at Toowoomba grammar school. He studied French and English at the University of Queensland, during which period he also served as a private during the First World War, where his interests in the ‘underside’ of language originated. He then became Queensland Travelling Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, and taught at Manchester and London Universities before founding his own publishing firm Scholartis in 1927. This firm closed in 1931, at which point Routledge and Kegan Paul commissioned Partridge to write a dictionary of slang. This was eventually published as A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English in 1937, and was followed by other works on language (slang and etymology in particular). He wrote novels under the pseudonym Corris Denison, and also wrote professionally on tennis, which he played to a high standard. He married Agnes Dora Vye-Parminter in 1925, with whom he had a daughter. During the Second World War he joined the army education corps and later the correspondence department of the RAF. He died in Moretonhampstead, Devon, in 1979.

Alan George Delgado (1909-1983), author and editor, was born in London. His publication include 'Victorian entertainment', 1971, 'The annual outing and other excursions', 1977, and 'Edwardian England; illustrated contemporary sources', 1967.

Usual EUL arrangements apply.

Donated to the University Library in Nov 2006.

One letter only

Description created by Rob Ford, 19 Apr 2007.

Usual EUL restrictions apply.

Other papers of Eric Partridge are held at the following repositories: University of San Francisco Library; British Library, Manuscript Collections; Cambridge University Library, Dept. of Manuscripts and University Archives; Warwickshire Record Office; Kings College London: Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives; Birmingham University Information Service: Special Collections Department; Royal Institute of British Architects Library; Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service: William Salt Library. See also: EUL MS 138, MS 289