The eighteenth century was a key period in the development of the English language, in which the modern standard emerged and many dictionaries and grammars first appeared. This book is divided into thematic sections which deal with issues central to English in the eighteenth century. These include linguistic ideology and the grammatical tradition, the contribution of women to the writing of grammars, the interactions of writers at this time and how politeness was encoded in language, including that on a regional level. The contributions also discuss how language was seen and discussed in public and how grammarians, lexicographers, journalists, pamphleteers and publishers judged on-going change. The novel insights offered in this book extend our knowledge of the English language at the onset of the modern period.

'Eighteenth-Century English: Ideology and Change represents another significant contribution to English historical linguistics in the Studies in English Language series … under the supervision of Merja Kytö. The volume, edited by Raymond Hickey, contains sixteen essays by leading scholars whose main research interests include the development of English in the Late Modern period. The book therefore serves as a useful companion to its predecessor on the nineteenth century, Nineteenth-Century English: Stability and Change (2006) … I am confident that the studies in this volume will encourage further investigation into this prolific, yet somewhat neglected, period of the history of the English language.' María José López-Couso, English Language and Linguistics

Raymond Hickey is Professor of Linguistics in the English Department at Essen University, Germany. His recent publications include Legacies of Colonial English: Studies of Transported Dialects (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Irish English: History and Present-Day Forms (Cambridge University Press, 2007).