Article published In:
Historiographia LinguisticaVol. 27:1 (2000) ► pp.21–36
Robert Dodsley and the Genesis of Lowth’s
Short introduction to english grammar
On the basis of an analysis of the correspondence of the 18h-century London bookseller Robert Dodsley (1703–1764), a proposal is offered concerning the origin of Robert Lowth’s (1710–1787) Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762). The author presents arguments which suggest that Lowth’s grammar was not his own idea but that of Dodsley, who also invoked the assistance of another author whose work he published, William Melmoth (1710–1799). If this thesis holds, Lowth’s grammar is just as much the outcome of a ‘bookseller’s project’, as Dr Johnson’s Dictionary (1755), the idea for which, according to Johnson’s biographer Boswell, also came from Dodsley.
References
Alston, Robin C.
1965 A Bbliography of the English Language from the Invention of Printing to the Year 1800. Vol. I: English Grammars Written in English. Leeds: E. J. Arnold & Son.
Battestin, Martin C. & Clive T. Probyn
eds. 1993 The Correspondence of Henry and Sarah Fielding. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Baugh, Albert C. & Thomas Cable
1993[1951] A History of the English Language. 4th ed. London: Routledge. 
Boswell, James
1970[1953] Life of Johnson. Ed. by Robert William Chapman, 3rd rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DNB = The Compact Edition of the Dictionary of National Biography
. 21 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1975.
Hepworth, Brian
1978 Robert Lowth. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
Ilson, Robert
1985 “Usage Problems in British and American English”. The English Language Today ed. by Sidney Greenbaum, 166–182. Oxford & New York: Pergamon.
Leonard, Sterling A.
1929 The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700–1800. Madison: University of Wisconsin.
Lowth, Robert
1762 A Short Introduction to English Grammar; with critical notes […]. London: J. Hughs for A. Millar, and for R. & J. Dodsley. (Facs.-repr. from Lowth’s own copy, with a notice by Robin C. Alston, Menston: The Scolar Press 1968.)
1995 The Major Works. Ed. by David Reibel. London: Routledge/Theommes Press.
Michael, Ian
1970 English Grammatical Categories and the Tradition to 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1996 “Lowth, Robert”. Lexicon grammaticorum: Who’s who in the history of world linguistics ed. by Harro Stammerjohann, 588–590. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Murray, Lindley
1795 English Grammar, adapted to the different classes of learners […]. York: Wilson, Spence & Mawman.
Nagashima, Daisuke
1968 “Mutual Debt between Johnson and Lowth: A contribution to the history of English grammar”. Studies in English Literature (Japan)
441.221–232.
The Oxford Companion to the English Language
Ed. by Tom McArthur. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press 1992.
Percy, Carol
1997 “Paradigms Lost: Bishop Lowth and the ‘poetic dialect’ in his English grammar”. Neophilologus 811.129–144.
Reddick, Allen
1996[1990] The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, 1746–1773. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Redford, Bruce
ed. 1992–1994 The Letters of Samuel Johnson. 51 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Reibel, David
1995 “Introduction” to Robert Lowth, A Short Introduction to the English Language, vii–xxxvii. London: Routledge/ Theommes Press. [Reprint of the 2nd, corrected ed. of 1763.]
Sledd, James H. & Gwin J. Kolb
1955 Dr Johnson’s Dictionary. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
1988 “Dr. Johnson and the Auxiliary do
”. Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature 331.22–39.
1990 “Exemplification in Eighteenth-Century English Grammars”. Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics ed. Sylvia Adamson, Vivien Law, Nigel Vincent & Susan Wright, 481–496. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
1992 “John Kirkby and the Practice of Speaking and Writing English: Identification of a manuscript”. Leeds Studies in English 231.157–179.
1996 “Lindley Murray and the Concept of Plagiarism”. Two Hundred Years of Lindley Murray ed. by Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 81–96. Münster: Nodus.
In prep. “The Reprints of Lowth’s Grammar”.
Tierney, James E.
ed. 1988 The Correspondence of Robert Dodsley 1733–1764. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vorlat, Emma
1959 “The Sources of Lindley Murray’s ‘The English Grammar’”. Leuvense Bijdragen 481.108–125.
Ward, John
1758 Four Essays upon the English Language. London: John Ward.
Williams, Marjorie
1939 The Letters of William Shenstone (1714–1763). Oxford: Blackwell.
Cited by
Cited by 6 other publications
Lavidas, Nikolaos
2019. The Hypothesis of Change from Above in the History of English: State of the Art and Perspectives. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 54:s1 ► pp. 251 ff. 
Navest, K.
2006. Lowth, Robert (1710–1787). In Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, ► pp. 334 ff.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2002. Robert Lowth and the strong verb system. Language Sciences 24:3-4 ► pp. 459 ff.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2012. “My imperfect attempt towards an English Grammar”. Historiographia Linguistica 39:1 ► pp. 61 ff.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2012. Robert Lowth as a Codifier of the English Language. Historiographia Linguistica 39:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Wolf, Göran
2012. Heinrich Christoph Albrecht’s Versuch einer critischen Englischen Sprachlehre
. Historiographia Linguistica 39:1 ► pp. 93 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 september 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.