(F)AQ
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In his Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), Lowth referred to Dryden's Essay of Dramatick Poesie. Nuria Yáñez-Bouza would like to know whether it was the first edition, 1668, or the revised edition, 1684.
- Ingrid Tieken would like to make an inventory of copies of Lowth's grammar owned by private individuals, as a supplement to Alston's overview (1965). Please send any bibliographical information of such copies to email@robertlowth.com. This information will be treated confidentially.
The question of the pronunciation of Lowth’s name always comes up, as it did in a radio interview with Ingrid Tieken on 12 March 2010. The phonologist Robert Stockwell, for instance, once queried Tieken’s pronunciation, saying that “the only word in the English language that ends on -owth is growth, so why not pronounce it like that?” A respondent to the above interview suggested a link with loud, as a “nickname for a noisy individual” (see P.H. Reaney’s Dictionary of British Surnames, London, 1991). Robert Lowth, however, was hardly a noisy individual, but the name is of course much older than that, so the link makes very good sense.
