During this time Partridge also worked for three years as a schoolteacher before enrolling in the Australian Imperial Force in April 1915 and serving in the Australian infantry during the
First World War,[6] in
Egypt,
Gallipoli and on the
Western Front,[1] before being wounded in the
Battle of Pozières.[6] His interest in slang and the "underside" of language is said to date from his wartime experience.[7] Partridge returned to university between 1919 and 1921, when he received his BA.[6]
Career
After receiving his degree, Partridge became Queensland Travelling Fellow at
Balliol College,
Oxford,[6] where he worked on both an MA on eighteenth-century English romantic poetry, and a B.Litt in comparative literature.[8] He subsequently taught in a grammar school in Lancashire for a brief interval, then in the two years beginning September 1925, took lecturing positions at the Universities of
Manchester and
London.[1][9] From 1923, he "found a second home", occupying the same desk (K1) in the
British Museum Library (as it was then known) for the next fifty years. In 1925 he married Agnes Dora Vye-Parminter, who in 1933 bore a daughter, Rosemary Ethel Honeywood Mann.[1][10] In 1927 he founded the
Scholartis Press, which he managed until it closed in 1931.[11]
During the twenties he wrote fiction under the pseudonym 'Corrie Denison'; Glimpses, a book of stories and sketches, was published by the Scholartis Press in 1928. The Scholartis Press published over 60 books in these four years,[1] including Songs and Slang of the British Soldier 1914-1918, which Partridge co-authored with
John Brophy. From 1932 he commenced writing in earnest. His next major work on slang, Slang Today and Yesterday, appeared in 1933, and his well-known Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English followed in 1937.[1]
During the
Second World War, Partridge served in the
Army Education Corps, later transferring to the RAF's correspondence department, before returning to his British Museum desk in 1945.[1]
Three Personal Records of the War (with
R. H. Mottram and John Easton). Scholartis Press, 1929; republished as Three Men's War: The Personal Records of Active Service (1930).
Songs and Slang of the British Soldier (with John Brophy). Scholartis Press, 1931.
A Charm of Words. New York, Macmillan Co., 1961 (copyright 1960)
A New Testament Word Book: a Glossary. London, George Routledge & Sons, 1940; republished New York, Books for Libraries Press, 1970. The 1987 republication by the Christian publisher Barbour & Company of Uhricksville, Ohio as The Book of New Testament Word Studies, with copyright claimed by the publisher, appears to be a copyright violation.
The 'Shaggy Dog' Story. New York, Philosophical Library, 1954.
A Dictionary of the Underworld. London, Macmillan Co., 1949; reprinted with new addenda, New York, Bonanza Books, 1961.
A Dictionary of RAF Slang. Michael Joseph, 1945; new edition with an introduction by
Russell Ash, Pavilion Books, 1990
ISBN978-1-85145-526-3
Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang.
Origins: A Short
Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (1958). Reprint: Greenwich House, New York, 1983.
ISBN0-517-41425-2. Reprint: Random House Value Publishing (1988)
Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English. Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Books. Reprint: W. W. Norton & Company (1997)
ISBN0-393-31709-9
Name This Child. Hamish Hamilton.
Name Your Child. Evans Bros.
Eric Partridge in His Own Words. Edited by David Crystal. 1980. Macmillan Publishing Co., New York.
ISBN0-02-528960-8.
As 'Corrie Denison',
Glimpses. Scholartis Press, 1928.
'From Two Angles', a long story telling the story of the First World War from two points of view, and including many soldiers' songs, is included in A Martial Medley, Scholartis Press, 1931.
^Matthew, Colin (1997),
"Birth details of Eric Partridge", Brief Lives: Twentieth-century Pen Portraits from the Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 425,
ISBN9780198600879
^Partridge, E (edited by Paul Beale) (1986) A Dictionary of Catch Phrases:from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day. Routledge (See Preface to the First Edition p. ix)