H. W. (Henry Watson) Fowler

Born in Tonbridge, Kent, on March 10, 1858, Henry Watson Fowler was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford. He worked as a schoolmaster before turning fully to writing and lexicography, bringing a teacher’s eye for clarity to everything he wrote.

Fowler is most closely associated with A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), the book that made his surname shorthand for practical advice on English style. He also worked with his brother Francis George Fowler on The King's English and on the first edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary, helping shape reference books that reached a very wide audience.

What made Fowler last was not just scholarship, but voice: he wrote about usage with firmness, humor, and a dislike of needless fuss. He died on December 26, 1933, in Hinton St George, Somerset, but his influence has remained strong wherever people care about writing that is direct, exact, and readable.