An exploration of how philology contributed to the study of English language and literature in the nineteenth century.

Preface; 1. Introduction: where is philology?; 2. Philological awakening: William Jones and the architecture of learning; 3. The Anglo-Saxon revolution: John Mitchell Kemble and the paradigm; 4. The Philological Society of London: lexicography as national philology; 5. The professor and the reader: vernaculars in the academy; Epilogue: the closing of the phase of philology; Bibliography.

Haruko Momma is Professor of English at New York University. Her previous publications include The Composition of Old English Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 2007).