Major Works
- The Phonology of Modern Icelandic, 1923
- Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber (with Martin B. Ruud) 1929
- Widsith from the Exeter Book, 1936
- The Viking Society 1936
- Ten Old English Poems put into Modern English alliterative verse, 1941
- Grundtvig as Beowulf Critic 1941
- American College Dictionary (etymology editor) 1947
- The Literary History of England: Vol 1: The Middle Ages to 1500 (with Albert C. Baugh) 1959
- The Random House American Dictionary and Family Reference Library (with others) 1968
- Deor 1977
and many, many more translations and articles
Biography of Kemp Malone
Kemp Malone, brother of historian Dumas Malone, was born in Minter, Mississippi, on March 14, 1889. He was a world authority on Chaucer and Beowulf, an etymologist, and a medievalist. Born into an academic family of eight children (his father was also a classicist and professor and president of several colleges and seminaries in the South), Malone graduated from Emory College in 1907. He traveled to Europe to learn the languages of the peoples of the British Isles and spent years in Germany, Denmark, and Iceland studying languages. He served two years in the US army during World War I, and then in 1921, he became a member of the faculty at the University of Minnesota. In 1924 he joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University where he was a professor of English literature for over thirty years. He retired from Johns Hopkins in 1956.
Malone became the etymology editor of the American College Dictionary, which was published in 1947. During his career, he was a visiting professor and lecturer at many universities in the United States and overseas, receiving many honorary degrees as well.
Malone is the author of over 500 works, including many translations of medieval poetry. His personal library, consisting of more than 20,000 volumes, was given to Emory University (his alma mater), and his papers were presented to Johns Hopkins University after his wife ( Inez Chatain Malone) died. Malone died at his summer home in Eastport, Maine, on October 13, 1971, where he was working on The History of the English Language.
Related Websites
- The Linguistic Society of America (which Malone was a founder) publishes his obituary/biography.
- Goodreads has reviews of Widsith.
- Kemp Malone Lecture Series at Emory has biography of Malone.
- Page from John Algeo’s The Origins and Development of the English Language, p.196, mentions that Malone was one of three founders of magazine American Speech.
- Sources for Malone’s bibliography at Arizona.
- Special collections at Johns Hopkins