This article provides a detailed study of the annotations in the two Winchester College copies of Robert Lowth’s (1710–1787) Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) which R. C. Alston used for his facsimile edition (1968). Alston believed that one of the copies belonged to Lowth and that the other copy was used for the second edition of the grammar in 1763. My article, however, demonstrates that this was not the case. It present arguments that serve to identify the owner of the second copy, and it demonstrates that there is one feature in his language the historical development of which was very likely due to influence from Lowth’s grammar. From a wider perspective, this article will highlight the extent to which contemporary readers responded to books they owned by including annotations in them.
1965A Bibliography of the English Language from the Invention of Printing to the Year 1800. Vol. I1: English Grammars Written in English. Leeds: E. J. Arnold & Son.
Alston, R. C.
1974English Linguistics 1500–1800. London: The Scolar Press.
Alston, R. C.
1994Books with Manuscript: A short title catalogue of books with manuscript notes in the British Library. London: British Library.
Baker, Frank
ed.1980The Works of John Wesley. Vol. XXV1: Letters I1. 1721–1739. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Balderston, Katharine C.
1951Thraliana: The diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs. Piozzi) 1776–1809. 21 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Chapman, R[obert] W[illiam]
1945 “The Formal Parts of Johnson’s Letters”. Essays on the Eighteenth Century presented to David Nichol Smith in honour of his seventieth birthday ed. by James Sutherland & Frank Percy Wilson, 147–154. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
ed.1963The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. By James Boswell, ESQ. With marginal comments and markings from two copies annotated by Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi. Vol. I1. New York: Heritage Press.
Gustafsson, Larisa Oldireva
2002a “Preterite and Past Participle Forms in English 1680–1790”. Standardisation Processes in Public and Private Writing. (= Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia, 120.) Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.
Gustafsson, Larisa Oldireva
2002b “Variation in Usage and Grammars: The past participle forms of write in English 1680–1790”. Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics 2 ([URL]).
Hepworth, Brian
1978Robert Lowth. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
Holmes, Janet
1995Women, Men, and Politeness. New York & London: Longman.
Jackson, Heather J.
2001Marginalia: Readers writing in books. New Haven, Ct. & London: Yale University Press.
Jackson, Heather J.
ed.2003A Book I Value: Selected marginalia by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Jackson, Heather J.
2005Romantic Readers: The evidence of marginalia. New Haven, Ct. & London: Yale University Press.
Jacox, Francis
1972 [1872]Aspects of Authorship: Or book marks and book makers. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press.
Leonard, S[terling] A[ndrus]
1929The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700–1800. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin (Repr., New York: Russell & Russell 1962.)
Lowth, Robert
1762A Short Introduction to English Grammar; with critical notes. London: J. Hughs for A. Millar, and for R. and J. Dodsley. (Facs.-repr. with a notice by Robin C. Alston, Menston: The Scolar Press 1968.)
Lowth, Robert
1763A Short Introduction to English Grammar; with critical notes. The second edition, corrected. London: A. Millar, and R. and J. Dodsley.
Lowth, Robert
1764A Short Introduction to English Grammar; with critical notes. A new edition, corrected. London: A. Millar, and R. and J. Dodsley.
Mann, Charles W., Jr.
1994 “The Williamscote Library at Penn State: An 18th-century survival”. Paper delivered for the meetings of the East-Central American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies held at Penn State. October 1994. ([URL], consulted on 11 Feb. 2006.)
Michael, Ian
1987The Teaching of English, from the sixteenth century to 1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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.
Navest, Karlijn
2003 “Epistolary Formulas in Queeney Thrale’s Letters”. MA thesis, English Department, University of Leiden.
Navest, Karlijn
2006 “An Index of Names to Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), (1763), (1764)”. Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics 61 ([URL]).
Nichol, Donald W.
ed.1992Pope’s Literary Legacy: The book-trade correspondence of William Warburton and John Knapton with other letters and documents 1744–1780. Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society.
OCEL: The Oxford Companion to the English Language
1992 Ed. by Tom McArthur. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2004 Ed. by H. C. G. Matthew & Brian Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Percy, Carol
1997 “Paradigms Lost: Bishop Lowth and the ‘Poetic Dialect’ in his English grammar”. Neophilologus 811.129–144.
Reddick, Allen
1990The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary 1746–1773. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Redford, Bruce
1986The Converse of the Pen: Acts of intimacy in the eighteenth-century familiar letter. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.
Reibel, David
1995 “Introduction” to Robert Lowth, A Short Introduction to English Grammar, v–xxxii. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press. [Reprint of the 2nd, corrected ed. of 1763.]
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
1997 “Lowth’s Corpus of Prescriptivism”. To Explain the Present. Studies in the changing English language in honour of Matti Rissanen ed. by Terttu Nevalainen & Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, 451–463. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2000 “Normative Studies in England”. History of the Language Sciences/Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften/Histoire des Sciences du Langage ed. by Sylvain Aroux, E. F. K. Koerner, Hans-Josef Niederehe & Kees Versteegh, vol. I1, 876–887. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2001 “Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) reprinted”. Publishing History 491.5–17.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2002 “Robert Lowth and the Strong Verb System”. Language Sciences 241.459–469.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2003a “Lowth’s Language”. Insights into Late Modern English ed. by Marina Dossena & Charles Jones, 241–264. Bern: Peter Lang.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2003b “ ‘Tom’s Grammar’: The genesis of Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar revisited”. The Teaching of English in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Essays for Ian Michael on his 88th birthday ed. by Frances Austin & Chris Stray (= Special issue of Paradigm 2:7), 36–45.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2006a “Eighteenth-Century Prescriptivism and the Norm of Correctness”. The Handbook of the History of English ed. by Ans van Kemenade & Bettelou Los, 539–557. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2006b.“James Merrick: Poet, scholar, and linguist?” Historiographia Linguistica 33:1/2.39–56.
Tierney, James E.
ed.1988The Correspondence of Robert Dodsley 1733–1764. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 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.