More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 1 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.

The book examines the work of Renaissance lexicographers such as John Palsgrave, Claudius Hollyband, Richard Huloet, and Peter Levins, with particular focus on the author at work: the struggles of these lexicographers to understand the semantic range of a word and to explain and transpose it into another language; their assessment of different linguistic and cultural expressions, and their morphological analyses; and their efforts to find ways of structuring and presenting lexical information. Gabriele Stein explores the influence of the works by Ambrogio Calepino, Robert Estienne, Hadrianus Junius, and Conrad Gesner, and the extent to which bi- and multilingual dictionaries in the 16th century are often pan-European in character; she also provides the first in-depth and richly-illustrated discussion of the use of typographical resources to present the structure of lexical information.

This volume brings together twelve previously published essays, divided into three sections: 1. Surveys of 16th- and 17th-Century Linguistic Scholarship, 2. The Study of Universal and Particular Traits of Language, and 3. Language Learning and Language Instruction. The volume is completed by an index of biographical names and an index of subjects and terms.

A History of English, first published in 1970, is a book for beginners in linguistic history. This title examines the changes in English language speech and writing over a period of almost 2000 years, whilst also exploring more recent changes within the author’s living memory. This title aims to raise countless issues for enquiry and discussion, and its purpose is to serve as a springboard for language history learning rather than a textbook.

Thomas Spence (1750-1814) was a native of Newcastle upon Tyne who is best known for his political writings, and more particularly for his radical 'Plan' for social reform involving common ownership of the land. One hitherto neglected aspect of Spence's Plan was his proposal to extend thebenefits of reading and of 'correct' pronunciation to the lower classes by means of a phonetic script of his own devising, first set out and used in Spence's Grand Repository of the English Language (1775).The Grand Repository was one of many English pronouncing dictionaries produced in the late eighteenth-century to satisfy the growing demands for a clear guide to 'correct' pronunciation. It differs from its contemporaries firstly in that it was intended primarily for the lower classes, and secondlyin that it is the only eighteenth-century pronouncing dictionary of English to use a truly 'phonetic' script in the sense of one sound being represented by one symbol.In this fascinating and unique account, Beal pays particular attention to the actual pronunciations advocated by Spence and his contemporaries with a view to reconstructing what was felt to be 'correct' pronunciation in eighteenth-century Britain. With broad appeal to linguists and historians alike,this study highlights the importance of pronouncing dictionaries as a resource for the historical phonologist, and provides a valuable addition to the limited body of knowledge on eighteenth-century pronunciation.