The English Language : Fowler

It's the birthday of the man who wrote the Dictionary of Modern English Usage, H.W. (Henry Watson) Fowler, born in Tonbridge, Kent, England (1858). He lived on the island of Guernsey, in the English Channel, and tried to make a living as an essayist, but that didn't work out. So he decided to write a book about how not to write. The result was his first big success, The King's English (1906). His Dictionary of Modern English Usage came out 20 years later, in 1926, and became an instant classic. T. S. Eliot said, "Every person who wishes to write ought to read A Dictionary of Modern English Usage ... for a quarter of an hour every night before going to bed."
Though his books eventually made him a very rich man, H.W. Fowler remained fixed in his habits. He went for a swim every day until he was 74, no matter how cold the English Channel was. When he got home from his swim, he always had a boiled egg for breakfast, and then he would take all the eggs out of the carton and turn them over so that the yokes wouldn't spoil. He once said, "I have a pedantically tidy soul."