The story
Founded by Frederick James Furnivall in 1864.1
The Society was founded in England in 1864 by Frederick James Furnivall. Its stated goal was "on the one hand, to print all that is most valuable of the yet unprinted MSS. in English, and, on the other, to re-edit and reprint all that is most valuable in printed English books, which from their scarcity or price are not within the reach of the student of moderate means."
In 1921 Mabel Day became the assistant director of the EETS. She is remembered for her work with the EETS and with Sir Israel Gollancz who was its director. Mabel Day kept the EETS financially viable until 1947.
In 1935 the EETS decided to publish editions of the Ancrene Wisse, a fourteenth-century text also known as the A Guide for Anchoresses. Day advised on several editions and she worked on the Nero MS version. The principles which she established are said to have governed all the later editors.
Gollancz died in 1930. He had been working on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and this was unfinished when he died. Day modestly completed the work and it was published in 1940. Another of his works, Mum and the Sothsegger, was also completed by Day and Robert Steele and published in 1936.
From Wikipedia’s article on Early English Text Society, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4