I first came across Joseph Wright’s story
while reading Humphrey Carpenter’s biography on JRR Tolkien.
“Joe Wright was a Yorkshireman, a truly
self-made man who had worked his way up from the humblest origins to become
Professor of Comparative Philology. He had been employed in a woollen-mill from
the age of six, and at first this gave him no chance to learn to read and
write. But by the time he was fifteen he was jealous of his workmates who could
understand the newspapers, so he taught himself his letters. This did not take
very long and only increased his desire to learn, so he went to night-school
and studied French and German, He also taught himself Latin and mathematics,
sitting over his books until two in the morning and rising again at five to set
out for work.” (Carpenter 1977:55)
Wright used his savings to finance a term’s
study at a university in Germany, walking most of the way to Heidelberg. Here
he eventually took a doctorate before returning to England and joining Oxford
University. Here he became a professor and wrote various books, among which was
a Gothic primer, which “proved a revelation to Tolkien” (Carpenter 1977:55).
I have not been able to read the biography
Wright’s wife wrote about him, but just this little piece of a life, written
about in someone else’s biography, has been an inspiration to me and probably
many others as well.
When I first read about this man who worked
as hard as he could, regardless of his circumstances, I must have been in grade
11. My own love for languages had been kindled not that long before and I had
seriously started to consider studying languages. I first came into contact
with Gothic (other than the few words quoted in the Tolkien biography) in one
of my first-year Afrikaans classes (about the language’s history, to be exact),
where the Lord’s Prayer was quoted in our textbook. Little did I know then that
only a few years later I would be using Wright’s own textbook in some of my
studies!
Here is a sound clip and the text of the Lord's Prayer being recited in Gothic.
Here are some links to Wright’s works available
online and more information about him:
