Charles Kay Ogden

• Region — Western philosophy • Era — Contemporary philosophy • Name — Charles Kay Ogden • Born — 1 June 1889 • Birthplace — Fleetwood, Lancashire, England • Died — 20 March 1957 • Place of death — London, England • School Tradition — British pragmatism • Education — Magdalene College, Cambridge (MA, 1915) • Main Interests — Philosophy of language • Notable Ideas — Semantic triangle, Basic English

Charles Kay Ogden was born at Rossall School in Fleetwood, Lancashire, on 1 June 1889 to Charles Burdett Ogden (13 July 1849 – 10 December 1923) and Fanny Hart (1850 – 21 December 1944), who were married in 1888 at Chorlton, Lancashire. His father was employed in various capacities at the Rossall School during the years 1873–1909. Charles Kay Ogden was educated at Buxton and Rossall, won a scholarship to Magdalene College, Cambridge, and commenced his undergraduate study of Classics in 1908. He visited continental Europe to investigate methods of language teaching in 1912 and 1913. Ogden obtained a MA in 1915.

In 1912 Ogden founded the weekly Cambridge Magazine, which he edited until it ceased publication in 1922. The initial period was troubled. Ogden was studying for Part II of the Classical Tripos when offered the chance to start the magazine by Charles Granville, who ran a small but significant London publishing house, Stephen Swift & Co. Thinking that the editorship would mean giving up first class honours, Ogden consulted Henry Jackson, who advised him not to miss the opportunity. Shortly after, Stephen Swift & Co. went bankrupt. Ogden continued to edit the magazine during World War I, when its nature changed, because rheumatic fever as a teenager had left him unfit for military service. Ogden often used the pseudonym Adelyne More (add-a-line more) in his journalism. The magazine included literary contributions by Siegfried Sassoon, John Masefield, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett. It evolved into an organ of international comment on politics and the war, supported in the background by a group of Cambridge academics including Edward Dent (who sent Sassoon's work), Theo Bartholomew and Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson. A survey of the foreign press filled more than half of each issue, being the Notes from the foreign press supplied by Dorothy Buxton which appeared there from October 1915 onwards until 1920, and its circulation rose to over 20,000. Buxton was in fact then leading a large team translating and collating articles from up to 100 foreign newspapers; for instance, Italian articles were supplied in translation in numbers by Dent. This digest of European press coverage was exclusive to the Magazine, and gave it disproportionate influence in political circles. For example, Robert Reid, 1st Earl Loreburn, used the Notes from the foreign press to advocate to the Marquess of Lansdowne in 1916 against bellicose claims and attitudes on the British side. During 1917 the Magazine came under heavy criticism, with its neutral use of foreign press extracts being called pacifism, particularly by the pro-war patriotic Fight for Right Movement headed by Francis Younghusband. Dorothy Buxton's husband Charles Roden Buxton was closely associated with the Union of Democratic Control. Sir Frederick Pollock, who chaired Fight for Right, wrote to The Morning Post in February 1917 charging the Magazine with pacifist propaganda, and with playing on its connection with the university as if it had official status. Gilbert Murray, a supporter of Fight for Right but also a defender of many conscientious objectors and the freedom of the press, intervened to protest, gaining support from Bennett and Hardy. John George Butcher, Conservative Member of Parliament for the City of York, asked a question in Parliament about government advertising in the Magazine, during November 1917. The parliamentary exchange had two Liberal Party politicians, William Pringle and Josiah Wedgwood, pointing out that the Magazine was the only way they could read German press comments. The Cambridge Magazine continued in the post-war years, but wound down to quarterly publication before closing in 1922. When Claude McKay arrived in London in 1919 he had a letter of introduction to Ogden from Walter Fuller. He contacted Ogden in March 1920 and Ogden published his poetry in the Magazine.

Ogden published four books during WWI. One was The Problem of the Continuation School (1914), with Robert Hall Best (1843–1925) of the Best & Lloyd lighting company of Handsworth, and concerned industrial training. He also translated a related work by Georg Kerschensteiner (1854–1932) who had introduced him to Best, which appeared as The Schools and the Nation (1914). Militarism versus Feminism (1915, anonymous) was co-written with Mary Sargant Florence mother of Alix. Uncontrolled Breeding, or, Fecundity versus Civilization (1916) was a tract in favour of birth control, published under his pseudonym Adelyne More. Ogden ran two bookshops in Cambridge as well as a gallery where he sold works of art by members of the Bloomsbury Group. One of his bookshops was looted on the day the First World War ended. Ogden built up a position as editor for Kegan Paul, publishers in London. In 1920, he was one of the founders of the psychological journal Psyche, and later took over the editorship; Psyche was initially the Psychic Research Quarterly set up by Walter Whately Smith, but changed its name and editorial policy in 1921. It appeared until 1952, and was a vehicle for some of Ogden's interests. Also for Kegan Paul he founded and edited what became five separate series of books, comprising hundreds of titles. Two were major series of monographs, "The History of Civilization" and "The International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method"; the latter series included about 100 volumes after one decade. From its launch in 1924, he edited the "To-day and To-morrow" series, another extensive series running to about 150 volumes, of popular books in essay form with provocative titles. The first of the series after an intervention by Fredric Warburg was Daedalus; or, Science and the Future by J. B. S. Haldane, an extended version of a talk to the Heretics Society. Other series were "Science for You" and "Psyche Miniatures".

From 1925 until his death in 1957, the advocacy of Basic English became Ogden's primary activity. Basic English is an auxiliary international language of 850 words comprising a system that covers everything necessary for day-to-day purposes. These 850 words, together with its five combinatory rules, were designed to do the work of some 20,000 English words, which appealed to many of the leading communications philosophers and theorists of the time, including Otto Neurath and Willard C. Brinton. To promote Basic English, Ogden in 1927 founded the Orthological Institute, from orthology, the abstract term he proposed for its work (see orthoepeia). Its headquarters were on King's Parade in Cambridge. From 1928 to 1930 Ogden set out his developing ideas on Basic English and Jeremy Bentham in Psyche. In 1929 the Orthological Institute published a recording by James Joyce of a passage from a draft of Finnegans Wake. In summer of that year Tales Told of Shem and Shaun had been published, an extract from the work as it then stood, and Ogden had been asked to supply an introduction. When Joyce was in London in August, Ogden approached him to do a reading for a recording. In 1932 Ogden published a translation of the Finnegans Wake passage into Basic English. By 1943 the Institute had moved to Gordon Square in London. Ogden was also a consultant with the International Auxiliary Language Association, which presented Interlingua in 1951. He furthermore was the editor for Kenneth Searight's book Sona.

Ogden died on 20 March 1957 in London, at a private clinic. He never married.

Ogden collected a large number of books. His incunabula, manuscripts, papers of the Brougham family, and Jeremy Bentham collection were purchased by University College London in 1953 with the help of a grant from the Nuffield Foundation. His personal papers and the remaining 100,000 books in his collection were purchased after his death by the University of California - Los Angeles. University College London also holds the papers of Mark Haymon, Ogden's solicitor and collaborator.