Eric Partridge - Scholarly Career

Scholarly Career

After receiving his degree, Partridge became Queensland Travelling Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, where he worked on both an MA on eighteenth-century English romantic poetry, and a B.Litt in comparative literature. He subsequently taught in a grammar school in Lancashire for a brief interval, then in the two years beginning September 1925, took lecturing positions at the Universities of Manchester and London. From 1923, he "found a second home", occupying the same desk (K1) in the British Museum Library (as it was then known) for the next fifty years. In 1925 he married Agnes Dora Vye-Parminter, who in 1933 bore a daughter, Rosemary Ethel Honeywood Mann. In 1927 he founded the Scholartis Press, which he managed until it closed in 1931, publishing over 60 books during this time. From 1932 he commenced writing in earnest. His first major work on slang, Slang Today and Yesterday, appeared in 1933, and his well-known Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English followed in 1937.

During the Second World War, Partridge served in the Army Education Corps, later transferring to the RAF's correspondence department, before returning to his British Museum desk in 1945.

Partridge wrote over forty books on the English language, including well-known works on etymology and slang. He also wrote novels under the pseudonym Corrie Denison, and books on tennis, which he played well. His papers are archived at the University of Birmingham, British Library, King's College, Cambridge, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the University of Exeter, the University of San Francisco, Warwickshire Record Office, and William Salt Library.