Charles Kay Ogden (; 1 June 1889 – 20 March 1957) was a British linguist, philosopher, and writer. Described as a polymath but also an eccentric and outsider,Frank Kermode in the London Review of Books he took part in many ventures related to literature, politics, the arts, and philosophy, having a broad effect particularly as an editor, translator, and activist on behalf of a reformed version of the English language. He is typically defined as a linguistic psychologist, and is now mostly remembered as the inventor and propagator of Basic English.
Early life and education
Charles Kay Ogden was born at Rossall School in Fleetwood, Lancashire, on 1 June 1889 to Charles Burdett Ogden (13 July 1849 – 10 December 1923) and Fanny Hart (1850 – 21 December 1944),(Scroll down in the left-hand column of names to "Ogden, Fanny Hart" – her entry states that she died on 21 December 1944) who were married in 1888 at Chorlton, Lancashire. His father was employed in various capacities at the Rossall School during the years 1873–1909. (Yorkshire Chess History – Charles Burdett Ogden)
Charles Kay Ogden was educated at Buxton and Rossall, won a scholarship to Magdalene College, Cambridge, and commenced his undergraduate study of Classics in 1908.
He visited continental Europe to investigate methods of language teaching in 1912 and 1913. Ogden obtained a MA in 1915.
Career The Heretics Society
In 1909, while still an undergraduate, Ogden co-founded the Heretics Society in Cambridge which questioned traditional authorities in general and religious dogmas in particular, in the wake of the paper Prove All Things,Prove All Things; a paper read at the first meeting of the Religious Discussion Society, Emmanuel College (1909). read by William Chawner, Master of Emmanuel College, a past Vice-Chancellor. The Heretics began as a group of 12 undergraduates interested in Chawner's agnostic approach.
The Society was nonconformist and open to women, and Jane Harrison found an audience there, publishing her inaugural talk for the Society of 7 December 1909 as the essay Heresy and Humanity (1911), an argument that warned of the dangers of group-think and implored the audience to realize that we are constantly negotiating the line between egotism and herd instinct, but that how we navigate that line matters. Investigating the origins of the word 'heresy'; her lecture, later published in Alpha and Omega (1915), challenged many of the religious restrictions and rules of the Anglican Church and its connections with the university. The talk of the following day was from J. M. E. McTaggart, and was also published, as Dare to Be Wise (1910). Another early member with anthropological interests was John Layard;George W. Stocking, Malinowski, Rivers, Benedict and Others: Essays on Culture and Personality (1986), p. 51. Herbert Felix Jolowicz, Frank Plumpton Ramsey and Philip Sargant Florence were among the members.Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, article on Ogden, J. W. Scott, revised by W. Terrence Gordon. Alix Sargant Florence, sister of Philip, was active both as a Heretic and on the editorial board of the Cambridge Magazine.Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie, Joy Dorothy Harvey, The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: L-Z (2000), p. 1245.
Ogden was President of the Heretics from 1911, for more than a decade;Annabel Robinson, The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison (2002), p. 233. he invited a variety of prominent speakers and linked the Society to his role as editor. In November 1911 G. K. Chesterton used a well-publicised talk to the Heretics, titled The Future of Religion, to reply to George Bernard Shaw, who in May had talked on The Religion of the Future. On this occasion Chesterton produced one of his well known bons mots: Questioner: ... I say it is perfectly true that I have an intuition that I exist. Mr. Chesterton: Cherish it.The Future of Religion: Mr. G. K. Chesterton's reply to Mr. Bernard Shaw (1911]).
In 1912 T. E. Hulme and Bertrand Russell spoke. Hulme's talk on Anti-Romanticism and Original Sin was written up by Ogden for the Cambridge Magazine, where in 1916 both Hulme and Russell would write on the war, from their opposite points of view.Robert Ferguson, The Short Sharp life of T. E. Hulme (2002), pp. 111–3 and 236-7. Rupert Brooke addressed them on contemporary theatre, and an article based on his views of Strindberg appeared in the Cambridge Magazine in October 1913.Christopher Hassall, Rupert Brooke: A Biography (1964), pp. 376–9. Another talk from 1913 that was published was from Edward Clodd on Obscurantism in Modern Science.Obscurantism in modern science. An address delivered before the "Heretics" society in Cambridge. (1913) Ogden was very active at this period in seeing these works into print.Other speakers before the outbreak of war in 1914 included: William Archer, A. C. Benson, Gilbert Cannan, Edward Gordon Craig, G. H. Hardy, Frank Harris, Jack Hulbert, Henry Arthur Jones, Vernon Lee, Oliver Lodge, Harold Monro, Gilbert Murray, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, Owen Seaman and Philip Waggett. C. K. Ogden: A Collective Memoir, p. 21.
On 4 February 1923, the biologist J.B.S. Haldane lectured the Society on "Daedalus; or, Science and the Future", a speculative vision that enjoyed some success in print and spurred in 1924 a less optimistic response from Bertrand Russell entitled "Icarus or the Future of Science".
The Heretics continued as a well-known forum, with Virginia Woolf on 18 May 1924 using it to formulate a reply to criticisms from Arnold Bennett arising from her Jacob's Room (1922), in a talk Character in Fiction that was then published in The Criterion. This paper contains the assertion, now proverbial, that "on or about December 1910 human character changed". The Heretics met in November 1929, when Ludwig Wittgenstein lectured to it on ethics, at Ogden's invitation, producing in A Lecture on Ethics a work accepted as part of the early Wittgenstein canon.J. Mark Lazenby, The Early Wittgenstein on Religion (2006), p. 5.
Cambridge Magazine In 1912 Ogden founded the weekly Cambridge Magazine, which he edited until it ceased publication in 1922. The initial period was troubled. Ogden was studying for Part II of the Classical Tripos when offered the chance to start the magazine by Charles Granville, who ran a small but significant London publishing house, Stephen Swift & Co. Thinking that the editorship would mean giving up first class honours, Ogden consulted Henry Jackson, who advised him not to miss the opportunity. Shortly after, Stephen Swift & Co. went bankrupt.Philip Sargant Florence, C. K. Ogden: A Collective Memoir, p. 16. Ogden continued to edit the magazine during World War I, when its nature changed, because rheumatic fever as a teenager had left him unfit for military service.C. K. Ogden: A Collective Memoir, p. 35.
Ogden often used the pseudonym Adelyne More (add-a-line more) in his journalism. The magazine included literary contributions by Siegfried Sassoon, John Masefield, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett.
It evolved into an organ of international comment on politics and the war, supported in the background by a group of Cambridge academics including Edward Dent (who sent Sassoon's work), Theo Bartholomew and Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson.Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Siegfried Sassoon: The Making of a War Poet (1998), p. 254. A survey of the foreign press filled more than half of each issue, being the Notes from the foreign press supplied by Dorothy Buxton which appeared there from October 1915 onwards until 1920,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on Dorothy Buxton. and its circulation rose to over 20,000. Buxton was in fact then leading a large team translating and collating articles from up to 100 foreign newspapers; for instance, Italian articles were supplied in translation in numbers by Dent.Lawrence Haward, Edward J. Dent (1956), p. 24. This digest of European press coverage was exclusive to the Magazine, and gave it disproportionate influence in political circles. For example, Robert Reid, 1st Earl Loreburn, used the Notes from the foreign press to advocate to the Marquess of Lansdowne in 1916 against bellicose claims and attitudes on the British side.
During 1917 the Magazine came under heavy criticism, with its neutral use of foreign press extracts being called pacifism, particularly by the pro-war patriotic Fight for Right Movement headed by Francis Younghusband. Dorothy Buxton's husband Charles Roden Buxton was closely associated with the Union of Democratic Control. Sir Frederick Pollock, who chaired Fight for Right, wrote to The Morning Post in February 1917 charging the Magazine with pacifist propaganda, and with playing on its connection with the university as if it had official status.C. K. Ogden: A Collective Memoir, p. 38. Gilbert Murray, a supporter of Fight for Right but also a defender of many conscientious objectors and the freedom of the press, intervened to protest, gaining support from Bennett and Hardy.Duncan Wilson, Gilbert Murray (1987), p. 236. John George Butcher, Conservative Member of Parliament for the City of York, asked a question in Parliament about government advertising in the Magazine, during November 1917. The parliamentary exchange had two Liberal Party politicians, William Pringle and Josiah Wedgwood, pointing out that the Magazine was the only way they could read German press comments.
The Cambridge Magazine continued in the post-war years, but wound down to quarterly publication before closing in 1922. When Claude McKay arrived in London in 1919 he had a letter of introduction to Ogden from Walter Fuller. He contacted Ogden in March 1920 and Ogden published his poetry in the Magazine.Anne P. Rice, Witnessing Lynching: American writers respond (2003), p. 188.
Author, bookseller and editor
Ogden published four books during WWI. One was The Problem of the Continuation School (1914), with Robert Hall Best (1843–1925) of the Best & Lloyd lighting company of Handsworth, and concerned industrial training. He also translated a related work by Georg Kerschensteiner (1854–1932) who had introduced him to Best,:de:Georg KerschensteinerC. K. Ogden: A Collective Memoir, p. 25. which appeared as The Schools and the Nation (1914). Militarism versus Feminism (1915, anonymous) was co-written with Mary Sargant Florence mother of Alix. Uncontrolled Breeding, or, Fecundity versus Civilization (1916) was a tract in favour of birth control, published under his pseudonym Adelyne More.
Ogden ran two bookshops in Cambridge as well as a gallery where he sold works of art by members of the Bloomsbury Group. One of his bookshops was looted on the day the First World War ended.An eyewitness was I. A. Richards: "I came down King's Parade to see a crash of glass breaking. Ogden, by that time, was owner of three shops in Cambridge; one was a picture gallery, the others were bookstores. [...] I took my stand beside Ogden. Twenty or thirty drunken medical students were sacking the shop. Pictures were coming out through the plate glass in very dangerous fashion ... Duncan Grant ... Vanessa Bell ... Roger Fry." In Richards on Rhetoric 1991, edited Ann E. Berthoff, p. 8.
Ogden built up a position as editor for Kegan Paul, publishers in London. In 1920, he was one of the founders of the psychological journal Psyche, and later took over the editorship; Psyche was initially the Psychic Research Quarterly set up by Walter Whately Smith,Lewis Spence, Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology vol. 2 (2003), p. 749. but changed its name and editorial policy in 1921. It appeared until 1952, and was a vehicle for some of Ogden's interests.Psyche: An Annual of General and Linguistic Psychology, facsimile edition 1995 in 18 volumes.