The Oxford English Dictionary occupies a special place in the history of English, cultural as well as linguistic. This collection sets out to explore the pioneering endeavors in both lexicography and lexicology which led to the making of its first edition. Making use of much unpublished archive material, the essays brings a wide variety of perspectives to bear upon the OED, and the particular problems posed by the attempt to break new ground in its formation.

Talking Proper is a history of the rise and fall of the English accent as a badge of cultural, social, and class identity. Lynda Mugglestone traces the origins of the phenomenon in late eighteenth-century London, follows its history through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and charts its downfall during the era of New Labor. This is a witty, readable account of a fascinating subject, liberally spiced with quotations from English speech and writing over the past 250 years.

Talking Proper is a history of the rise and fall of the English accent as a badge of cultural, social, and class identity. Lynda Mugglestone traces the origins of the phenomenon in late eighteenth-century London, follows its history through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and charts its downfall during the era of New Labor. This is a witty, readable account of a fascinating subject, liberally spiced with quotations from English speech and writing over the past 250 years.

The Oxford English Dictionary occupies a special place in the history of English, cultural as well as linguistic. This collection sets out to explore the pioneering endeavors in both lexicography and lexicology which led to the making of its first edition. Making use of much unpublished archive material, the essays brings a wide variety of perspectives to bear upon the OED, and the particular problems posed by the attempt to break new ground in its formation.

Samuel Johnson: The Arc of the Pendulum offers unique insight into the works of Samuel Johnson by re-considering William Hazlitt's oft-cited comparison between Johnson's prose and a pendulum. In 1819, William Hazlitt condemned Samuel Johnson's prose style as 'a species of rhyming' in which 'the close of the period follows as mechanically as the oscillation of a pendulum, the sense is balanced with the sound'. Predictable, formulaic, and unresponsive, Hazlitt's Johnson was 'incapable of latitude and compromise, a mere automaton who rebounded from one position to its opposite extreme'.
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Popular readings of Johnson as a dictionary-maker often see him as a writer who both laments and attempts to control the state of the language. Lynda Mugglestone looks at the range of Johnson's writings on, and the complexity of his thinking about, language and lexicography. She shows how these reveal him probing problems not just of meaning and use but what he considered the related issues of control, obedience, and justice, as well as the difficulties of power when exerted over the 'sea of words'. She examines his attitudes to language change, loan words, spelling, history, and authority,...