Partridge was born in the Waimata Valley, near Gisborne, on the North Island of New Zealand to John Thomas Partridge, a grazier, and his wife Ethel Annabella Norris. In 1908 the family moved to Queensland, Australia, where he was educated at the Toowoomba Grammar School. He studied classics and then French and English at the University of Queensland. 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, serving in Egypt, Gallipoli and on the Western Front, before being wounded in the Battle of Pozières. His interest in slang and the "underside" of language is said to date from his wartime experience. Partridge returned to university between 1919 and 1921, when he received his BA.
Career
After receiving his degree, Partridge became Queensland Travelling Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, where he worked on both an MA on eighteenth-century English romantic poetry, and a B.Litt in comparative literature. 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. From 1923, he "found a second home", occupying the same desk in the British Museum Library for the next fifty years. In 1925 he married Agnes Dora Vye-Parminter, who in 1933 bore a daughter, Rosemary Ethel Honeywood Mann. In 1927 he founded the Scholartis Press, which he managed until it closed in 1931. 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, 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. 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. Partridge wrote over forty books on the English language, including well-known works on etymology and slang. He also wrote novels under the pseudonym Corrie Denison, and books on tennis, which he played well. His papers are archived at the University of Birmingham, British Library, King's College, Cambridge, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the University of Exeter, the University of San Francisco, Warwickshire Record Office, and William Salt Library. He died in Moretonhampstead, Devon, in 1979, aged 85.
Selected works
Songs and Slang of the British Soldier, Scholartis Press, 1931.
A Charm of Words. New York, Macmillan Co., 1961
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
. Hamish Hamilton, 1952. Reprinted 1969 by Books for Libraries Press, Freeport, New York.
Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English. Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Books. Reprint: W. W. Norton & Company
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..
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 Medleyy'', Scholartis Press, 1931.
