C. K. OGDEN : a bio-bibliographic study
W. TERRENCE GORDON
The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Metuchen, N.J., & London
1990 ISBN 0-8108-2317-9

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements		v
Preface		ix
I .	C. K. Ogden: a Biographical Essay	1
II .	C. K. Ogden: a Bibliography
	Books	57
	Articles	70
	Editorials	82
	Notes	89
	Reviews	95
	Translations	98
III.	Secondary sources
	Commentaries & Reviews of C. K. Ogden's Writings & Sequels by other Authors	101
	Life Data	129
Endnotes		135
Index		152

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PREFACE

    Single author bibliographies are often prepared during mopping-up operations, when the author has been the subject of a biography. My full-dress biography or C. K. Ogden may be ten to twenty years in the making, but 1989, the one hundredth anniversary of his birth,, stimulated my sense of occasion, and I have decided to let the world know already just what he wrote. In spite of J. R. L. Anderson's injunction, given among my opening quotations, Ogden has, until now, won admirer without the benefit of his own bibliography. It is hopped that the present work will allow their number to grow.

    The biographical essay of Part I is intended, above all, to limn [portray] Ogden's intellectual life and to show how his earliest studies gave form and unity to his later writings. but Ogden's accomplishments were not limited to his own writings, and the biographical essay, therefore, devotes substantial space to his activities as translator, editor, and inventor of the international auxiliary language he called Basic English.

    To current scholarship, Ogden's work is more often mentioned than discussed. He was, and is, probably read more often than studied. The bibliography, drawing together the works of Ogden, his commentators, and those whose work derived inspiration from his, makes provision for correcting that state of affairs and invigorating Ogden studies.

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I.   C. K. OGDEN: A BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY



Introduction: Mask of Words, Mirror of Thoughts
    When C. K. Ogden was not making a jest or a mystery of himself, he was pursuing his plan for global peace. When Winston Churchill hailed that plan in 1943, radio flashed Ogden's name to every corner of the earth. ...

Early Years
    As son was born to Charles Burdett Ogden and his wife Fanny Hart ... 1 June 1889 ... scholarly family ... The elder Ogden was a headmaster, and his son was educated at preparatory school .. He enjoyed and excelled at sports, particularly soccer. Then illness struck him at age sixteen. Rheumatic fever kept Ogden bed-ridden ... for nearly two years ... It ended Ogden's days as a promising athlete before he arrived at Magdalene College and ensured that, for him, life at Cambridge would be a world of books and ideas.

The Heretics
    Ogden arrived at Cambridge with a classical scholarship in 1908, selecting the influence of the Greek language on Greek thought as his field of specialization. This topic, referred to variously as the power of words, word-magic, etc. in Ogden's writings, would form one of this key themes till the end of his career. ...
    Moving spirit of first meeting ... Heretics ... to promote discussion of religion, philosophy, and art. ... secretary, obtained speakers, then president for 12 years ...

Ogden and Lady Welby
    "Significs" .. Writing to Lady Welby ... What is Meaning? (1903) and her conviction that the uses of language was in a state of crisis ... fostering "linguistic conscience" ... at age 73 .... [She raised questions that sparked Ogden's solutions later in life.] He distinguished between the principles of significs and the application to which they must be put:
It is to be hoped that we will speak of a linguistic conscience -- a desire to impart without ambiguity, to apprehend without misunderstanding by a more perfect method and through a more perfect medium than any hitherto attained. ...

The Cambridge Magazine
    Ogden took first class honors ... in 1911. ... The first issue of The Cambridge Magazine appeared 20 January 1912 ... the largest circulation of any university weekly in England between 1916 and 1920 ...
    Ogden catered to the reading interests of every segment in the university, from the athletically-minded to the political activists, but there was an unmistakable reflection of The Heretics program in his editorial priorities. The magazine introduced readers to the questions of philosophy, psychology, aesthetics, and religion, discussed at The Heretics, and it promoted the society through reports of its meetings. ...
    A remarkable feature ... was its Foreign Press Survey ... 200 newspapers and journals were systematically reviewed for pertinent material to broaden the perspective of readers, who eventually benefited from over three million translated words. ...

Ogden the Translator
    The Cambridge Magazine and his bookstores occupied Ogden for a decade without hampering his career as a translator. He produced fully half of his lifetime output of fifteen books translated from French and German during this period. ...
    Ogden was a translator out of conviction. International understanding was the cause he first served by providing the Foreign Press Survey in "The Cambridge Magazine." It remained the central driving force through his thirty years of work on Basic English. And the translator's invisible status sited him ideally. . . .

Ogden and I. A. Richards
    ... their long, late-night talk after the Armistice Day debacle galvanized Ogden and Richards into action on their projected book. The Meaning of Meaning. . . . While the twosome prepared their book by night, Ogden was preparing for its publication by day. ... The book would take more than four years to complete. It achieved enough success to make its authors' names inseparable. Much of their later work was mistaken as the product of continuing collaboration.

Ogden as Editor at Kegan Paul
    Ogden assisted in founding the Journal Psyche in 1920. ... As business manager of Psyche, he made his first contact with the publishers of the journal, the London firm of Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Company. Within two years, he joined the firm as consulting editor. He was still working actively in that capacity at the time of his death, 35 years later. ... [he created ] five series : the International Library [70 volumes], The History of Civilization [50], Today and Tomorrow [150], Science for You, and Psyche Miniatures [50].

Psyche
    Psyche was launched in 1920 ... Over the thirty years of Ogden's editorship, Psyche became his personal vehicle, in an even more pronounced way than had "The Cambridge Magazine." ... There is a rich documentation for the intellectual odyssey of Ogden's life in the page of "Psyche". An attentive reader learns that Ogden discovered Jeremy Bentham in 1914, but that he delayed his study of Bentham's work till 1918. Notes on Universal Language reveal that Ogden was testing a form of Basic English twenty years before he unveiled it under that name. Illuminating comments on the process Ogden used for the word selection of Basic English are here. There are also lapses and thought-provoking humor. As ever, there are mysteries : why was Ogden's "Panoptic Method", "with the printer" in 1930, never published?

From Bentham to Basic English ... Welby's ... attempt to focus attention on the influence of language in creating systems of philosophies; in Benthan's work he saw an appealing progression from the analysis of language to the laying of a foundation for a specific program of language reform. ... Ogden's ... progress from speculation on the simplification of English and discussion of "Universal Language" to Basic English...
    The key to that simplification was the elimination of verbs ...Applying the same rigor to other parts of speech, he produced the 850-word system of Basic English, intended as an international auxiliary language.
    At home, he opened the doors of the Orthological Institute to train prospective teachers of Basic English. By 1935, it had established representatives in thirty countries ...
    Centers for teaching Basic English were organized with the support of American educational foundations, such as the Irving Trust, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Payne Fund. At the invitation of the latter, some 200 teachers visited the Orthological Institute by 1940. ...
    The successes were noted and resented in some quarters. As Ogden observed :
The extent to which the international purpose was appreciated, when the advantages of Basic were presented without 'imperialist' implications attaching to cultural propaganda in favour of English, aroused the hostility of the advocates of Esperanto and other artificial languages which had failed to make headway.
He noted, too, that when Basic English had been presented to the world in 1929, there were no rival systems of simplified English : there would soon be several.
    The dependence of the Orthological Institute on grant money from America, in unpredictable sums for unpredictable duration, prevented planning on the scale Ogden considered necessary to ensure the organization's future. He hoped to secure funding from the British government to solve this problem. Hope glimmered when Neville Chamberlain appointed a committee of the Economic Advisory Council to investigate methods of teaching simplified English. But war broke out, and the Committee never met. ... Ogden reflected on the opportunity missed : ... "It is now known that the Prime Minister himself took the view that knowledge of Basic English would be of great importance to the world generally."
    Winston Churchill's endorsement of Basic English, as he accepted an honorary degree from Harvard University, 6 September 1943, came as a complete surprise to Ogden. . . . It led to a demand for Basic English books which could not be supplied, because of war shortages ; to the withdrawal of American support, in the belief that Churchill's remarks signalled his government's willingness to assume all future funding ; and to over three years of negotiations to establish a Basic English Trust. ...
    ... Those steps required the formation of an Inter-departmental Committee, involving six ministries. It soon became the bane of Ogden's existence.
    The development of Basic English never became the main thrust of the Committee's work. From the onset, its time was given, almost completely, to the details of establishing a Basic English Trust. ...
    ... saw the end of the Churchill government as the end of Basic English. "It seems to us that the recent change of government may result in the whole question [of Basic English] being put on a high shelf in a dark corner."
    ... The Cabinet Conclusion of 24 June 1946 stated that "the Government should continue to promote the use of Basic English by official means." On 17 April 1947, the Basic English Foundation was formed, with Ogden as Chairman ... A year later he resigned and in June 1948, the copyright in Basic English was assigned to the Trustees of the Basic English Foundation. ... [ The Foundation continued through 1955.]

Still Worse, the Whirl of Words
    ... he died of cancer on 21 March 1957. ...
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Ogden's pseudonym of Adelyne More was used to "add-a-line more" as editorial comment.
G. B. Shaw also dropped financial support when the government got involved.

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