John Sampson (1862-1931) was an Irish linguist. As a scholar he is best known for The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales (1926), an authoritative grammar of the Welsh-Romany language.[1][2] It was written with the collaboration of Edward Wood, who died in 1902.[3] Sampson edited a collection the poetry of William Blake, Blake's "Poetical Works",[4] that restored the text from original works and annotated the published variants; Alfred Kazin described this as "the first accurate and completely trustworthy edition'.[5]
He was born in Schull, County Cork, Ireland, and had to leave school aged 14 after his father died. He became librarian at University College, Liverpool in 1892, largely self-taught.[6]
In 1901 he met the artist Augustus John, and they struck up a long friendship, leading to an emphasis in John’s works on Romany subjects.[7]
The writer Anthony Sampson, who was John Sampson's grandson, published a biography The Scholar Gypsy of him in 1997.[8]