Edward Adolf Sonnenschein

Edward Adolf Sonnenschein M.A., Litt.D. (1851 – 2 Sep 1929) was an English Classical Scholar and writer on Grammar and Metre.

Brief career biography

Edward Adolf Sonnenschien, a classical scholar and writer on comparative grammar and metre. He obtained a BA, at University College London in 1868 (featuring amongst the notable ‘List of Old Gowers’) former pupils of University College School (opened in 1830) from where the sobriquet 'Old Gowers' derives. He was appointed Oxford; professor of Greek and Latin at newly founded Mason College, Birmingham (afterwards University of Birmingham), 1883-1918. He was a Plautine scholar; publishing editions of Captivi (1879), Mostellaria (1884), and Rudens (1891); and took up reform of grammar teaching and published "Parallel Grammar" series, which was warmly welcomed in Great Britain and on the continent. He joined John Percival Postgate in forming Classical Association in 1903; much of his grammatical research summed up in The Unity of the Latin Subjunctive (1910) and The Soul of Grammar (1927). He insisted upon the humanities taking their proper place in the modern university; and took up question of war-guilt during European war; a very exact scholar.

Immediate family

Edward was born in London, England in 1851 the eldest son to Adolf Sonnenschein and Sarah Robinson Stallybrass. He married Edith Annesley Bolton (1854–1943) and they had three children: Edward Jamie Sonnenschein (Somerset) (born 20 November 1885), Christopher Edward Sonnenschien and Edward Oliver (Stallybrass). In the light of the hostility to Germans during the First World War two of his sons changed their surnames adopting more anglicised ones (see brackets) but not all the family did so. He died on 2 September 1929 in Bath, Somerset, England.

Family background

His father Adolphus Sonnenschein, was a teacher and writer of textbooks who originally came from Moravia in central Europe within the old Austro-Hungarian Empire which is now part of the Czech Republic. He married Sarah Robinson Stallybrass and they had six children. Edward Stallybrass (Sarah’s father), had been a missionary to Mongolia with a close friend William Swan and they worked on a Mongolian translation of the New Testament together.
The third son, William Swan Sonnenschein born in 1855 (Edwards younger brother) took his second name ‘Swan’ from the maternal grandfather’s friendship. As a young man William was apprenticed to the firm of Williams and Norgate where he gained experience of second hand bookselling before founding his own company, W. Swan Sonnenschein & Allen, with the first of several partners, J. Archibald Allen, in 1878. This partnership was dissolved in 1882 when William married and the firm's name changed to W Swan Sonnenschein & Co. The firm published general literature and periodicals but specialised in sociology and politics. Sonnenschein was involved with the Ethical Society and published their literature. In 1895 Swan Sonnenschein became a limited liability company and in 1902 William Swan Sonnenschein left to work at George Routledge and Sons and later at Kegan Paul. Swan Sonnenschein was amalgamated with George Allen & Co in 1911. He changed his ‘German’ surname during the First World War to Stallybrass for the remainder of his life. He died in 1934.

Academic life and work

He was an influential Classical Scholar, Professor of Greek and Latin at Mason College and University of Birmingham between 1883 and 1918, during which time he wrote most of his work. It is estimate he produced around 175 works in 444 publications which have been translated into 9 languages and held in over 2,363 libraries worldwide. He was Editor of several of the plays of Plautus and collaborated with John Percival Postgate, forming the Classical Association in 1903, becoming its Secretary. He contributed articles for the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica (designated in EB1911 by the initials ‘E. A. So’.). His views differed from Otto Jespersen (1860–1943) a Danish linguist, which he explained in ‘The Soul of Grammar’, first published in 1927, as his answer to Jespersen's Philosophy of Grammar (1924) as the summation of his thinking on the subject.

Works by E. A Sonnenschein

Many of these academic publications are used in schools and colleges around the world as standard text. These are amongst the most widely held works by libraries.

• ‘T. Macci Plavti Rvdens by Titus Maccius Plautus’ (Book), 38 editions published between 1891 and 1989 in 3 languages and held by 231 libraries worldwide
• ‘Mostellaria by Titus Maccius Plautus’ (Book), 23 editions published between 1884 and 1970 in 3 languages and held by 160 libraries worldwide
• ‘T. Macci Plavti Mostellaria’ by Titus Maccius Plautus(Book , 3 editions published between 1907 and 1957 in Latin and English and held by 159 libraries worldwide
• ‘The Soul of Grammar;’ a bird's-eye view of the organic unity of the ancient & the modern languages studied in British and American schools, ( Book ), 5 editions published between 1927 and 1929 in English and held by 158 libraries worldwide
• ‘What is rhythm’, ( Book ), 3 editions published in 1925 in English and Undetermined and held by 153 libraries worldwide
• ‘T. Macci Plauti Rudens by Titus Maccius Plautus’ (Book), 14 editions published between 1891 and 1976 in 4 languages and held by 152 libraries worldwide
• ‘A new English grammar based on the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Terminology’, ( Book ), 17 editions published between 1916 and 1962 in English and Undetermined and held by 126 libraries worldwide
• ‘Through German eyes’, ( Book ), 11 editions published between 1914 and 1915 in English and held by 83 libraries worldwide
• ‘T. Macci Plauti Captivi by Titus Maccius Plautus’ (Book), 30 editions published between 1879 and 1903 in 3 languages and held by 81 libraries worldwide
• ‘Bentley's Plautine emendations from his copy of Gronovius by Richard Bentley’( Book ), 6 editions published between 1883 and 1963 in English and held by 79 libraries worldwide
• ‘A new Latin Grammar : based on the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Terminology’, ( Book ), 11 editions published between 1912 and 1925 in English and Undetermined and held by 76 libraries worldwide
• ‘T. Macci Plavti Rvdens by Titus Maccius Plautus’ (Book), 5 editions published between 1901 and 1969 in Latin and English and held by 58 libraries worldwide
• ‘A Greek grammar for schools; based on the principles and requirements of the Grammatical Society’, ( Book ), 18 editions published between 1898 and 1929 in English and German and held by 53 libraries worldwide
• ‘The unity of the Latin subjunctive: a quest. Being a paper read in abstract before the Classical Association,’ ( Book ), 2 editions published in 1910 in English and held by 52 libraries worldwide
• ‘Ora maritima; a Latin story for beginners’, with grammar and exercises, (Book), 10 editions published between 1902 and 1927 in 3 languages and held by 45 libraries worldwide
• ‘Recommendations of the Classical association on the teaching of Latin and Greek by Classical Association’ (Great Britain -Book), 2 editions published in 1912 in English and held by 28 libraries worldwide
• ‘T. Macci Plavti Rvdens’, Ed. minor, with an appendix on scansion for the use of schools by Titus Maccius Plautus (Book), 2 editions published between 1914 and 1926 in English and held by 27 libraries worldwide
• ‘Ora maritima; a Latin story for beginners’, (Book), 4 editions published between 1914 and 1929 in Latin and English and held by 23 libraries worldwide
• ‘What is rhythm? An essay’, (Book), 2 editions published in 1925 in English and held by 23 libraries worldwide
• ‘The gateway; a book of Latin composition for middle forms’, (Book), 4 editions published in 1924 in English and held by 21 libraries worldwide
• ‘The Soul of Grammar’ 1929,

E. A. Sonnenschein's ‘The Soul of Grammar’ book review and comments

Most recent grammarians, following the lead of Otto Jespersen (1860–1943) a Danish linguist and others, would have us view the grammars of the modern languages as living bodies in states of constant flux. According to this view, many of the grammatical structures inherent in the ancient, "parent" languages such as Greek and Latin have, for practical purposes, disintegrated and are no longer relevant. If the form of a grammatical element is no longer distinguishable, it is said no longer to exist and thus it does not warrant our attention. This approach requires varying and not always satisfactory re-descriptions of the grammatical functions of the different languages. Much like the Deconstructionist literary theory of a later generation, the Jespersen view, for good or ill swept the field. It had about it a panache, an easy glamour of the "modern" that proved difficult to resist. Those who opposed this view, among them the distinguished English classicist Edward Adolf Sonnenschein (a mere nine years older than Jespersen, but spiritually from a different world), could safely be brushed aside as fossils if not scholarly fuddy-duddies. Sonnenschein's approach was quite different from Jespersen's. He sought to discover, as it were, a common "soul" infusing the different bodies of grammar and rendering them capable of common description. Far from finding the traditional grammatical descriptions irrelevant, Sonnenschein saw in them a set of ready-made, intra-linguistic distinctions capable of rendering sensible the intricate, partially hidden webs of functionality in modern languages. Just because the dative form in English is no longer distinguishable does not mean there is no dative function persisting in the "soul" of the language. To pretend otherwise is to distort our understanding of the language as a whole, rather like trying to force-fit the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle where some are missing. Does it not make more sense, knowing what the missing pieces are, to put together the puzzle around the missing bits, exposing them negatively in the process and so arriving at the intended proportions? Well known in his own day as a scholar and teacher (C. T. Onions, the last editor of the original O.E.D., was among his pupils), Sonnenschein has more recently fallen into what is perhaps an undeserved neglect. His presence on the World Wide Web has, till now, been limited to a handful of scholarly footnotes on obscure pages. The Soul of Grammar, first published in 1927, was the summation of Sonnenschein's thinking on the subject and represented his answer to Jespersen's Philosophy of Grammar (1924). The present text is taken from the second edition, published with Addenda in 1929 shortly before Sonnenschein's death.”

Dr Jeffery A. Triggs, poet and author of numerous scholarly articles on English poetry, Rutgers, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Bibliography and sources

• The Oxford Concise Dictionary of National Biography: SONNENSCHEIN, Edward Adolf (1851-1929),

• 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, articles written by this author are designated in EB1911 by the initials "E. A. So.

• "SONNENSCHEIN, Edward Adolf" (1907), Who's Who, 59: pp. 1643–1644.

• www.ancestry.co.uk. family data, Edward A. Sonnenschein died in 1929 in Somerset.

• Edward Adolf Sonnenschein and the politics of linguistic authority in England 1880-1930’, in A. Linn and N. McLelland (eds), Flores Grammaticae: Essays in memory of Vivien Law (Münster: Nodus), pp. 211–19.

• On Jevons’s logical machine. By Edward Adolf Sonnenschein. Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Birmingham Philosophical Society, Vol. IV, Part 1. A paper read before the Society, 13 December 1883
• http://www.archive.org/search.php?...creator%3A%22Sonnenschein%2C+ (Sonnenschien Family details)