author
J. (Jakob) Schipper
1842–1915
A pioneering scholar of English language and verse, he helped bring the study of Old and Middle English to a wider academic audience in Europe. His work on English metrics and early literature made him an important figure in nineteenth-century philology.
1 Audiobook
A History of English Versification
by J. (Jakob) Schipper
About the author
Born in 1842 in Friedrich-August-Groden and later active in Vienna, Jakob Schipper was a German-Austrian philologist and professor best known for his work in English studies. He trained in several European centers of learning and built a career around the history of the English language, especially its older forms.
Schipper taught first at Königsberg and then at the University of Vienna, where he became a leading scholar of Anglistics. He wrote on Old English, Middle English, and the structure of English poetry, and his studies of versification were especially influential for readers interested in how English meter developed across the centuries.
Today he is remembered less as a novelist or creative writer than as a careful, wide-ranging scholar whose books helped shape the academic study of English literature and language. For listeners drawn to classic texts, medieval literature, or the history of English, his work opens a window onto how those traditions were first studied in a modern university setting.