Henry Sweet
Henry Sweet (1845-1912) was a philologist. He specialized in languages related to English (Anglo-Saxon, Old Icelandic and West Saxon). Sweet also published on larger issues of phonetics and grammar in language, but his work on the Germanic languages is more widely remembered.
Some of the books he wrote are Handbook on Phonetics (1877), Oldest English Texts (1885), Primer of Old Icelandic (1888), and several books for the Early English Text Society. He never managed to get a position with a college, which disturbed him greatly; he had done poorly in school, he had annoyed many people through bluntness, and didn't take every effort to gather official support. C. L. Wrenn found George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion a largely accurate portrayal of Sweet.
A bibliography and Collected Papers were published by H. C. Wyld.
Further reading
C. L. Wrenn, 'Henry Sweet', Transactions of the Philological Society 46.177-201 (1946)
