A masterful history of the English language from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem.

A Note on Texts and Letter Forms
Preface to the Revised Edition
Introduction: Finding English, Finding Us
1. Caedmon Learns to Sing: Old English and the Origins of Poetry
2. From Beowulf to Wulfstan: The Language of Old English Literature
3. In This Year: The Politics of Language and the End of Old English
4. From Kingdom to Realm: Middle English in a French World
5. Lord of This Langage: Chaucer's English
6. I Is as Ille as a Millere Are Ye: Middle English Dialects
7. The Great Vowel Shift and the Changing Character of English
8. Chancery, Caxton, and the Making of English Prose
9. I Do, I Will: Shakespeare's English
10. A Universal Hubbub Wild: New Words and Worlds in Early Modern English
11. Visible Speech: The Orthoepists and the Origins of Standard English
12. A Harmless Drudge: Samuel Johnson and the Making of the Dictionary
13. Horrid, Hooting Stanzas: Lexicography and Literature in American English
14. Antses in the Sugar: Dialect and Regionalism in American English
15. Hello, Dude: Mark Twain and the Making of the American Idiom
16. Ready for the Funk: African American English and Its Impact
17. Pioneers Through an Untrodden Forest: The Oxford English Dictionary and Its Readers
18. Listening to Private Ryan: War and Language
19. He Speaks in Your Voice: Everybody's English
20. Faith in English: Vernacular Devotion and Biblical Translation
Epilogue: The Talk and the Text
Appendix: English Sounds and Their Representation
Glossary
References and Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments to the Revised Edition
Index