ABSTRACT
Walter Whiter (1758-1832), an undergraduate and subsequently Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, from 1783 to 1797, spent the remainder of his life as rector of Hardingham, Norfolk. He was a lifelong friend of Richard Porson. Whiter also published Etymologicon Magnum, a universal etymological dictionary on a new plan (1800: part 1 only), Etymologicon Universal (3 vols, 1811, 1822, 1825), and A Dissertation on the Disorder of Death, or that State called suspended Animation (1819). Whiter’s work on Shakespeare was not well received by contemporary reviewers, who found the associationist method old-fashioned, and held that he made too great claims for his discoveries. But it has been vindicated in our time by the work of such critics as E.E.Kellett, Caroline Spurgeon, E.A.Armstrong and Kenneth Muir. For further references see the valuable edition (which includes Whiter’s later additions from a manuscript now in Cambridge University Library) by Alan Over, completed by Mary Bell (1967).
