This is a basic, and a bit indiosyncratic, bibliography of books which might be helpful for your work. Some are in the library, some are not; all are fascinating! They show the breadth of material and interest there is in this topic. Many of you will be English teachers: and as you know I'm sure, the best teachers love what they teach because they like being students of it themselves--they enjoy learning. I have therefore included popular books here as well as academic texts to open avenues you might walk down to to generate and continue your interests. There are some annotations here for help, but if you'd like more advice on where to look, some ask.
Books on Reserve: Note that there are also several articles on reserve accessible via the Electronic Reserves.
- Spevack, Martin. A Concordance to the Works of William Shakespeare. 6 vols. This is the fullest concordance. It has one volume each for the comedies (vol. 1), histories (vol. 2), and tragedies (vol. 3), and a full concordance of all of the works in the last three volumes. This means that if you look up a work in vol. 1, you will only find out where it appears in the comedies. To find out where it is all of his works use vols. 4-6.
- Bartlett, John. A Complete Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare. 1 vol. There are two copies of this on Reserve for the course. Note that since line numbers in different editions of Shakespeare vary, the concordances will almost certainly use line numbers that differ from whatever edition you are using--so you'll often have to hunt a bit around the concordance's line number reference to find the word.
- Evans, G.B., ed. The Riverside Shakespeare. One of two anthologies of Shakespeare on reserve.
- Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, eds. William Shakespeare, the Complete Works. The other one.
- Schmidt, Alexander. Shakespeare lexicon: A Complete Dictionary of all the English words, phrases and constructions in the works of the poet. Just what it says: very helpful!!
General histories of the language:
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Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language. A textbook. - Bryson, Bill. The Mother Tongue. Avon, 1996. A popular and very readable book.
- Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 2nd ed. One of our textbooks.
- Knowles, Gerry. A Cultural History of the English Language. A textbook, briefer than the others here because it omits the specific discussions of phonology and language forms.
- Lerer, Seth. Inventing English. New York: Columbia U, 2007. One of our textbooks.
- McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. The Story of English. A popular and very readable book connected to the PBS series of the same title.
- Millward, C.M. A Biography of the English Language. 2nd ed. One of our textbooks.
- Pyles, Thomas, and John Algeo. The Origins and Development of the English Language. A textbook.
- Robinson, Sandra, with Lindsay McAuliffe. Origins: Bringing Words to Life/the Word Families. Gives information on 12 basic word families in English, and how to use the information in writing, with examples from poetry. Includes writing exercises, a word tree, etc.
- Fowler, H.W. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. This still exists in updated versions, but there are enough changes that the older versions are worth looking at for how style has changed.
- Jesperson, Otto. The Growth and Structure of the English Language.
- Johnson, Samuel. "Preface" to his Dictionary of the English Language.
- Mencken, H.L. The American Language. 4th ed. New York, 1977. From the great curmudgeon.
- Webster, Noah. "Preface" to the American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828. Noah Webster also wrote a "reader," a grammar for school students to learn English, which reveals much about how English was taught at the time.
- Palmer, L.R. The Latin Language. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1954. A history of Latin, including its roots in Indo-European.
- Alfred the Great: Asser's Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources. Trans. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge. Penguin, 1987. We are reading selections from this.
- The Age of Bede. Trans. J.F. Webb; Ed. with and Intro. by D.H. Farmer. Penguin, 1988.
- Bede. A History of the English Church and its People. Trans. Leo Shirley-Price. Penguin, 1988.
- Hamer, Richard. A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse. With facing-page Old and Modern English texts.
- Mitchell, Bruce, and Fred C. Robinson. A Guide to Old English. Oxford: Blackwell. Now in its 6th edition (2001), this is the best introduction, with a student grammar and a set of texts.
- Ong, Walter. Orality to Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. One of our textbooks. A seminal discussion of the distinctions between oral and literate cultures, and the ways in which technologies, such as writing, fundamentally affect thought and belief.
- Pope, John C., ed. Seven Old English Poems. Old English versions of the major short poems with helpful discussions of the poems and their language.
- Bennett, J.A.W., and G.V. Smithers. Early Middle English Verse and Prose. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1974. A fundamental anthology of texts, with a discussion of the language, especially the dialects.
- Boyd, Beverly. Chaucer and the Medieval Book. LA: Huntington Library, 1973. Mostly about codicology and paleography--the study of how books are put together, and their handwriting--in the context of Chaucer. A good discussion of knowledge basic to medieval textuality which we have lost today.
- Burrow, J.A., and Thorlac Turville-Petre. A Book of Middle English. A great introduction to the Middle English language, with a grammar and a set of texts.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Reeve's Tale," from The Canterbury Tales--contains one of Chaucer's best dialect jokes.
- Davis, Norman, et. al. A Chaucer Glossary. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1988. The best word-list to go with Chaucer's works. This is on reserve, under my course on Chaucer (English 311 reserves).
- Fisher, John H., Malcolm Richardson, and Jane L. Fisher. An Anthology of Chancery English. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1984. An anthology of texts which exemplify the development of the official London dialect.
- Fisher, John H. The Emergence of Standard English. Kentucky: U of Kentucky P, 1996. A collection of his essays which are very readable and helpful
- Kökeritz, Helge. A Guide to Chaucer's Pronunciation. Toronto: Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching 3, 1978.
- Trevisa, John. "Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk" (in Burrow and Turville-Petre, above); "Preface" to his translation of Ranulf Higden's Polychronicon. This dialogue captures clearly the argument over whether to write in Latin (the Clerk's side) and English (the Lord's side).
- Bailey, Richard W. Images of English: A Cultural History of the Language. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1991. This book covers several periods, but it is strongest on the 16th through 18th centuries. It is complex, but very interesting if you take the time.
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Blake, Norman. Shakespeare's Language: An Introduction. The best introduction to his language, covering technical as well as some cultural issues. - Blank, Paula. Broken English: Dialects and the Politics of Language in Renaissance Writings. London: Routledge, 1996.
- Cusack, Bridget. Everyday English: A Reader, 1500-1700. U of Michigan, 1998. An anthology of texts from England, Scotland, and America, including things like diaries, wills, etc.
- Kermode, Frank. Shakespeare's Language. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2000. A study with more of a literary bent, interpreting the effect on his plays.
- Nicholson, Adam. God's Secretaries. A very readable discussion of how the King James Version of the Bible was translated.
- Partridge, Eric. Shakespeare's Profane Vocabulary. What a fun list of words.
- Wright, George T. Shakespeare's Metrical Art. For those interested in rhythm and metrics, this is a wonderfully lucid introdution not just to Shakespeare, but to poetic rythym in general.
Crowley, Tony. Standard English and the Politics of Language. Urbana: U of Indiana P, 1989.- Green, Jonathan. Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries they Made. Pimlico Press.
- Johnson, Samuel. Dictionary of the English Language. London, 1755.
- Matthews, David. The Making of Middle English, 1765-1910. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999. Talks about the rediscovery of Middle English literature during the period, the formation of the study of it as a scholarly pursuit, and the ideological currents surrounding the process.
- Murray, K.M. Elisabeth. Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary. Yale UP, 1977. Murray was a true eccentric, and his work on the dictionary makes for a fascinating read.
- Reddick, Allen. The Making of Johnson's Dictionary: 1746-1773.
- Webster, Noah. American Dictionary of the English Language. 1828. Noah Webster also wrote a "reader" which tells much about how English was taught.
- Winchester, Simon. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and The Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Harper, 1999. A story about Murray and one of the most important contributors to the first edition of Oxford's New English Dictionary.
- Winchester, Simon. The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford, 2004. This is a full history of the project of the Dictionary, of which his previous book The Professor and the Madman is a fascinating digression.
- Ayto, John. Twentieth-Century Words. Oxford UP. "flapper"? "flower power"? "road rage"?
- Bryson, Bill. Made in America. As with his book The Mother Tongue, this too is a very readable discussion, in this case of the history of American English and its varieties.
- Cutler, Charles L. O Brave New Worlds! Native American Loanwords in Current English. U of Oklahoma Press, 2000.
- Dillard, J.L. A History of American English.
- Douglass, Frederick. The Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Ed. Houston A. Baker. Penguin, 1986. The story of how he fought for his freedom, freedom for others, and--crucially--his own language.
- Garner, Bryan A. A Dictionary of Modern American Usage. Oxford UP. Advice on how to use language today--a great reference book as well as a gold mine for topics.
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Gates, H.L. The Signifying Monkey. A seminal academic study of African-American literature. - Hughes, Geoffrey. Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths, and Profanity in English. New York: Penguin, 1998.
- Lakoff, Robin. The Language War. Berkeley: U of California P, 2000. Great book. Lakoff has written several books on the different character of men's and women's speech.
- Macaulay, Ronald. The Social Art: Language and its Uses. Oxford, 1994. This book starts with how we learn language as children and builds from there. Similar to Pinker, but less complex. Perhaps less convincing too.
- McWhorter, John. The Missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the Birth of Plantation Contact Language. Berkeley: U of California P, 2000. Against the conventional "limited access model" of the southern plantation creole, which argues that southern slaves were forced to build a new language because they had limited access to standard dialects, McWhorter posits that plantation creoles arose instead in West African slave settlements, in interactions between white traders and slaves, some of whom were eventually transported overseas. This is an interesting study because it takes advantage of technical linguistic data as well as social and historical facts to construct its argument.
- Mencken, H.L. The American Language. 4th ed. New York, 1977.
- Montagu, Ashley. The Anatomy of Swearing. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2001.
- Pinker, Steven. Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. Perennial, 2000. Pinker has several books out on language (also see, for example, The Language Instinct) which are very readable discussions of quite complex linguistic issues. Words and Rules begins from a discussion of irregular and regular word forms, using that as a lever to pry open discussions of language history, language learning, the philosophy of language, and computers and language. Fascinating stuff.
- Pullum, Geoffrey, and James D. McCaulay. The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language. U of Chicago P, 1991.
- Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin' and Testifyin'. A foundational study of African-American English.
- Tiersma, Peter M. Legal Language. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1999. Tiersma shows to what extent legalese is a product of the past as far back as Old English times. It also deals a lot with the modern attraction to complex language, and how both obscurity and clarity can have strategic consequences.