James Elphinston

Born in Edinburgh on December 6, 1721, James Elphinston was educated at the High School and University of Edinburgh before building a career as a tutor and schoolmaster. He later settled near London, where he became known as an energetic educator and a determined student of pronunciation, spelling, and language structure.

Elphinston is best remembered for his campaign to reform English spelling along more phonetic lines. That made him a distinctive—and sometimes controversial—figure, but it also shows how seriously he took the problem of making language easier to learn and teach. Alongside his work on grammar and orthography, he translated and adapted other writers and edited Samuel Johnson's Rambler.

He died on October 8, 1809. Today he stands out as one of those fascinating literary oddballs whose work sits between scholarship, teaching, and reform: deeply serious in purpose, occasionally eccentric in method, and always devoted to the written word.