This textbook provides an overview of English during the period 1700–1900, referred to as Late Modern English (LModE). Drawing from a diverse range of resources—both historical (pronunciation dictionaries, prescriptive grammars, private letters, diaries, and literature) and modern-day corpora—the book presents a broad sociolinguistic account of everyday language use and linguistic attitudes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It describes the opposing influences of increasingly normative linguistic attitudes on the one hand, and rapid linguistic change triggered by, among other things, increasing social and geographical mobility and the break-up of social networks on the other. This is a snapshot of a period when, prior to the introduction of spelling education, a uniform, standardized system of spelling in printed texts co-existed with variability in the forms of spelling used by the majority of the population.

The first five of the seven chapters describe developments in the phonology, the spelling system, the lexicon, and the grammar of the language, while highlighting societal changes that were significant for its ongoing development: the emergence of a standardized spelling system, the proliferation of prescriptive grammars, the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of modes of transport and the Women's Suffrage movement. Ch. 6 probes the relevance of social network dynamics and linguistic models provided by individuals of high social status (e.g. Samuel Johnson), in relation to linguistic innovation and change. Ch. 7 considers linguistic features that were characteristic of various text types such as wills, letters, journals, and memoirs and evaluates the extent to which such documents form a reliable representation of the spoken language of the time. Throughout the book, sociolinguistic variation is emphasized, with discussion of gender differences, social class aspirations, sociolinguistic markers, linguistic accommodation, and hypercorrection. There is evidence that, despite increasing standardization, some phonological and grammatical features were “perceived [by contemporary novelists such as Dickens, Austen and Thackeray] to be of sociolinguistic significance long before the rise of sociolinguistics as a discipline” (77).

Readers are alerted to a wealth of research tools and innovative methods available for the investigation of LModE. Research questions at the end of each chapter encourage readers to make practical use of various electronic resources. The book thus provides an introduction to practical methods of historical linguistics research. While acknowledging the difficulties inherent in interpreting the evidence, this book demonstrates that by combining methods and sources of data, progress can be made towards a comprehensive and reliable account of spoken and written forms of LModE. Tieken-Boon van Ostade recognizes the interrelatedness of linguistic, social, political, educational, and cultural issues, and illustrates that despite its growing prescriptivism, LModE was a dynamic language with a wealth of social and regional variation.