“At first my object was purely philological, but soon I came to realise…” — Frederic William Moorman

“At first my object was purely philological, but soon I came to realise that men and women were more interesting than words and phrases, and my attention was attracted from dialect speech to dialect speakers.”

A scholar of folk-speech turning from vocabulary to the lives of the speakers · Preface, Songs of the Ridings

Frederic William Moorman

About Frederic William Moorman

8 September 1872–8 September 1919

In the pantheon of English regional literature, few figures have managed to bridge the gap between rigorous academic scholarship and authentic folk expression as successfully as Frederic William Moorman. Born in 1872 and tragically lost to the waters of the Yorkshire Dales in 1919, Moorman's brief but remarkable…

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