39 - Edward Vivian Gatenby, CBE (1892–1955): Distinguished Teacher of English as a Foreign Language

Summary

INTRODUCTION

ANYONE WHO HAS had anything to do with teaching English as a foreign language is most likely to have seen the name E.V. Gatenby on the title page of OUP's Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD). He comes second in the list of three editors, the first being A.S. Hornby (for whom, and the OALD's Japanese forerunner Kaitakusha's Idiomatic and Syntactic English Dictionary (ISED), see Volume VIII of these Portraits), and the third, A.H. Wakefield. In his Foreword to the original Kaitakusha edition, Hornby acknowledges Gatenby's and Wakefield's contributions thus:

Mr E. V. Gatenby undertook the second part of A (from archipelago) and the letters C, N, O, P, Q, R, V, J, X, Y, and Z. Mr A. H. Wakefield undertook the letters J, S, T, and U. For the rest of the Alphabet, many of the ‘heavy’ words (e.g. as, put, pull, set, so, take) and the chief determinatives, adverbial particles, anomalous finites and prepositions, I am responsible.

The order of the editors’ names would appear to reflect the proportion of their respective involvement in the Dictionary. However, it would be unfair to brand Gatenby as in some way secondary to Hornby in all aspects of what was to become the field of EFL (English as a foreign language), although in this Portrait, comparisons between the two will be inevitable.

BEFORE JAPAN

Edward Vivian Gatenby was born on 2 July 1892 (his grandfather's 56^th birthday) in the district of Leyburn in North Yorkshire, where his father Richard Fryer Gatenby (1861–1947) lived all his life. When Edward was born, his father ran the West Witton post office and a grocery and drapery business with his wife, Elizabeth, née Metcalfe, whom he married in 1886. Three children were born: John (21 August 1888; died 1891), Edward Vivian, and Bertha Alice (born 28 September 1902). The couple are recorded as running the West Witton business in the 1891, 1901 and 1911 censuses; Richard retired gradually in the 1930s. Richard wrote his own retrospective Family Chronicle between 1928 and 1933; it was edited and published by a local historian in 2008. Gatenby is a not uncommon name in North Yorkshire, and a historical connection with the village of Gatenby not far from Leyburn seems obvious.