M. (Maximilian) Schele de Vere

Born in Europe and educated in Germany, Schele de Vere came to the United States in the 1840s and built a long career at the University of Virginia, where he taught modern languages from 1844 until 1895. He became known on campus as a gifted teacher and a wide-ranging man of letters.

He wrote on many subjects, but language was one of his great interests. In books such as Americanisms; the English of the New World, he examined the character of American English and the ways it had developed its own vocabulary and habits of speech. His writing also ranged into travel, culture, and social observation, giving readers a window into nineteenth-century thought.

Today he is remembered both as a longtime Virginia professor and as an early interpreter of American language and culture. His work reflects a period when scholars were beginning to treat everyday speech as something worth studying in its own right.