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'Henry Sweet' (1845-1912) was a philologist, and is also considered to be an early linguist. He specialized in the Germanic languages, particularly Anglo-Saxon (Old English), Old Icelandic, and West Saxon. Sweet also published on larger issues of phonetics and grammar in language, and some of his ideas are still discussed. Some of Sweet's works are still in print and continue to be used as course texts at colleges and universities.
Some of the books he wrote are ''Handbook on Phonetics'' (1877), ''Oldest English Texts'' (1885), and ''Primer of Old Icelandic'' (1888). He also edited several books for the Early English Text Society. He never managed to get a position with a university, which disturbed him greatly; he had done poorly in school, he had annoyed many people through bluntness, and failed to take every effort to gather official support. In the preface to his play ''Pygmalion'', George Bernard Shaw, after describing Sweet, stated that 'Higgins is not a portrait of Sweet, to whom the adventure of Eliza Doolittle would have been impossible; still, as will be seen, there are touches of Sweet in the play.'
A bibliography and ''Collected Papers'' were published by H. C. Wyld.

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Further reading

★ Charles Leslie Wrenn, 'Henry Sweet', ''Transactions of the Philological Society'' 46.177-201 (1946)

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