Robert William Burchfield (January 27, 1923 - July 5, 2004)
was a scholar, writer, and lexicographer.
Born in Wanganui, New Zealand,
he studied at Victoria University in Wellington and, later, at Oxford University (Magdalen College)
in England on a Rhodes Scholarship, where he was mentored by J.R.R. Tolkien. From 1957 to 1986 he edited the second
Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary. Subsequently he produced
a controversial, substantially rewritten edition of
Modern English Usage, the famous style guide
to the English language by Henry Watson Fowler.
He died at the age of 81.
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