Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)

BOOK REVIEWS - Miklós Kontra: Vadon, Lehel: Országh IJszló. Eger: Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Nyomdája, 1994. 93 pp

A carefully presented and well documented biography (15—66) begins the book. Eleven excellently reproduced black-and-white photographs variously show Országh as a student of the famous Eötvös College in Budapest, among his classmates with Professor F. L. Pattee of Rollins College in Florida in the 1930s, lecturing in the Hungarian Academy in 1974, and last but not least, at the CBE ceremony where he received the "religious-looking" medal. Looking at the adult Országh in the pictures one cannot but agree with Gyula Kodolányi who has recently called him "a Hungarian gentleman". I personally agree with Kodolányi one hundred per cent that Országh was an extremely genuine personality, very elegant, somewhat anachronistic in communist Hungary, who wore his elegance on his sleeve purposely to defy the political system around him (Kodolányi 1993). Part two (67— 83) of the book contains the bibliography of Országh's published books and papers in chronological order, starting from 1929. His publications range from Hungarian and bilingual lexicography through Anglo-American/Hungarian cultural contacts to Shakespeare, Sinclair Lewis, "The genesis of the Hungarian name of the United States of America" (published in Hungarian Studies in English Vol. X [1976]), to an analysis of what American GIs read in WW II and many other areas. Országh called himself a ülosz, i.e. a philologist By that he meant a scholar equally well-versed in linguistics, literary history and possibly the arts. He belonged to the old school who were able to teach all the courses in the English department's curriculum from Beowulf to modern writers, and the history of English as well as its descriptive grammar and lexicography. He had a hard time reading letters from his former students when they claimed that the time of the allround scholar like himself was over and that literary studies had become so specialized as to make it impossible to keep up with developments even in closely related fields like linguistics. The variety of his topics and the quality of his publications make today's reader envy a man who studied the humanities in their integrity. Part three (84—93) is also highly informative containing bibliographic items about Országh and his published works. Listed here are reviews of his bilingual dictionaries by the Columbia professor John Lotz, Országh's Dutch 184