Some twenty years ago it was widely believed that nothing much has happened to the English language since the beginning of the eighteenth century. Recent research has shown that this is far from true, and this book offers an introduction to a period that forms the tail end of the standardisation process (codification and prescription), during which important social changes (the Industrial Revolution, the Women's Suffragette movement) are reflected in the language. Late Modern English is currently receiving a lot of scholarly attention, mainly as a result of new developments in historical linguistics. By drawing on such research the present book offers a much fuller account of the language of the period than was previously possible. It is designed for students and beginning scholars interested in the field of Late Modern English.
The volume includes:
* a basis in recent research by which sociolinguistic models are applied to earlier stages of the language (1700-1900)
* a focus on people as speakers (wherever possible) and writers of English
* assignments consisting of a selection of texts by a variety of authors illustrating linguistic and sociolinguistic processes going on at the time
* reference to relevant internet resources (e.g. the Corpus of Late Modern English Prose, the British National Corpus) for the purpose of illustration as well as to answer research questions.
Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade has a chair in English Sociohistorical Linguistics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade has a chair in English Sociohistorical Linguistics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. She is the director of a VICI research project called The Codifiers and the English Language: Tracing the Norms of Standard English.

1. Introduction; 2. Spoken English; 3. Spelling; 4. Vocabulary and early dictionaries; 5. Grammar and grammars; 6. Language and social networks; 7. The Language of Letters; 8. Conclusion; 9. Texts.