Walter William Skeat (1835-1912), was an English philologist and fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge which he became in 1860. In 1878 he was elected Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge. He completed Mitchell Kemble's edition of the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, and did much other work both in Anglo-Saxon and in Gothic, but is perhaps most generally known for his labours in Middle English, and for his standard editions of Chaucer and Langland's Piers Plowman. He edited numerous books for the Early English Text Society, and for the Scottish Text Society he edited The Kingis Quair, usually ascribed to James I of Scotland, and published an edition (2 vols., 1871) of Chatterton. In pure philology, Skeat's principal achievement is his Etymological English Dictionary (4 parts, 1879-1882). While preparing the dictionary he wrote hundreds of short articles on word origins for the London-based journal Notes and Queries. His other works include: A Concise Dictionary of Middle English (1888), A Student's Pastime (1896) and English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day (1911).