When, during the hot and humid summer of 1973 in Bloomington, Indiana, I laboured on putting together the first issue of Historiographia Linguistica, I could not foresee then that, 45 years later, the History of Linguistics would have become a major area of scholarly interest. Indeed, much to my pleasure, interest in the History of the Language Sciences has been growing very actively during the last decades, as has the number of venues for publication in various forms. National and international societies have often organized annual meetings and published the results in periodicals or proceedings. By now, one could almost write an entire book to account for these virtually global activities.

These developments could not have been anticipated in 1973 nor during quite a few subsequent years. At the time, I received little encouragement — apart from the young, enterprising John L. Benjamins in Amsterdam — and a great deal of opposition from established scholars, who clearly felt that someone who was only a visiting research fellow, i.e., someone without a regular appointment, was far from being up to scratch for such a task. Even a well-meaning professor in Bloomington told me that the History of Linguistics was not “Linguistics”, and hence there wasn’t a chance in Hades for me to get a position in a linguistics department.11.It is not without irony that the same scholar, Fred Walter Householder (1913–1994), should years later publish The Syntax of Apollonius Dyscolus, translated with commentary and an introduction (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1981) as volume 23 in my series “Studies in the History of the Language Sciences”.

Still today, I myself would advise students to get their degree in subjects such as French, Spanish or other linguistics fields in order to enhance their chances of getting an academic appointment.

The following scholars listed below have (since September 2017) served as referees for HL; several have evaluated more than one submission. (As always, my sincerest apologies go to anyone whom I may have inadvertently omitted.)22.It is only fair that I include at times members of the editorial team as well, since they also served as (anonymous) referees on several occasions.

Since September 2010 special personal thanks must be extended to Klaas Willems (Ghent), our Review Editor, for ‘hauling in’ a number of informative reviews and editing them in line with our stylistic conventions. Without his help I don’t know how I would have been able to cope with the many books devoted to the history of linguistic thought that have appeared in recent years. John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) must also be personally thanked for having stepped into the breach while I was in hospital for most of summer 2017. I also wish to express my deep gratitude to the other two Associate Editors, Katia Velmezova (Lausanne) for checking the French of a number of Résumés and for other services, and Nigel Love (Capetown, S. Africa) for assistance in the editing of several papers usually not written by native speakers, whose English style clearly needed significant improvement.

As on earlier occasions, I wish to express my gratitude to the authors of the articles and reviews that have appeared in HL, since without their contributions, there could be no journal.

Last, but by no means least, special thanks go to Anke de Looper of John Benjamins Publishing Company in Amsterdam, who for many years has taken care of the various tasks that have to be performed on the publisher’s side, and this with great care, attention to detail, and patience. I should also be quite remiss if I were to fail to acknowledge the work and generous support of Patricia Leplae, JB’s Production Manager.