A spirited account of the life and times of one of the seminal figures in history of English grammar which dispels the myth of Lowth as the icon of prescriptivism, and establishes him as a key figure in the history of English grammar. It will appeal to everyone interested in the history of English the long-running debate on linguistic correctness.

• 1: Prejudice and Misconceptions


• 2: Life and Career


• 3: The Grammar: Origin and Publication History


• 4: The Grammar: Contents and Approach


• 5: Reconstructing Lowth's Social Network


• 6: Communicative Competence and the Language of the Letters


• 7: Lowth's Own Usage and the Grammar's Norm of Correctness


• 8: The Grammar and the Rise of prescriptivism


• 9: Conclusion


• References


• Index

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade is Professor of English Sociohistorical Linguistics at the University of Leiden. She publishes the internet journal Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical linguistics. Her books include An Introduction to Late Modern English (EUP 2009), The Two Versions of Malory's Morte Darthur (Boydell and Brewer 1995), and The Auxiliary Do in Eighteenth-Century English (Foris 1987)