Whitley Stokes (Celtic scholar)

Whitley Stokes (February 28, 1830 - April 13, 1909) was a British lawyer and Celtic scholar.

He was a son of William Stokes (1804-1878), and a grandson of Whitley Stokes (1763-1845), each of whom was Regius Professor of Physics at the University of Dublin. In his day, William Stokes, who was the author of several books on medical subjects, was one of the foremost physicians in Europe.

Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, young Stokes became an English barrister in 1855, and in 1862 he went to India, where he filled several official positions. In 1877 he was appointed legal member of the viceroy's council, and he drafted the codes of civil and criminal procedure and did much other valuable work of the same nature. In 1879 he was president of the commission on Indian law. He returned to England in 1882. In 1887 he was made a C.S.I., and two years later a C.I.E.; he obtained honorary degrees from many universities, and was a fellow of the British Academy.

Whitley Stokes is perhaps most famous as a Celtic scholar, and in this field he worked both in India and in England. He studied Irish, Breton and Cornish texts.

Works

• Three Irish Glossaries (1862)
• Three Middle-Irish Homilies (1877)
• Old Irish Glosses at Merzburg and Carlsruhe (1887)
• Irische Texte published at Leipzig (1880-1900), co-editor with Ernst Windisch
• The Anglo-Indian Codes (1887).
• Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore (1890) translator
• Urkeltischer Sprachschatz (1894) with Adalbert Bezzenberger

External link

• Stokes bibliography at University College Cork's CELT project

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)