During the 1990s and the first decade of the twentieth century, Late Modern English received more attention than previously from language historians. This increased interest has yielded, among other things, studies on specific aspects of Late Modern English such as Beal (Reference Beal1999), edited works like Kytö, Rydén & Smitterberg (Reference Kytö, Rydén and Smitterberg2006), and books offering a more comprehensive picture of the language of the Late Modern period or parts thereof, such as Bailey (Reference Bailey1996), Romaine (Reference Romaine1998) and Görlach (Reference Görlach1999, Reference Görlach2001). In addition, the establishment of a conference series devoted to Late Modern English has both stimulated further research in the field and resulted in proceedings volumes containing focused studies, most recently Tieken-Boon van Ostade & van der Wurff (Reference Tieken-Boon van Ostade and van der Wurff2009). As this scholarly interest has increased our knowledge of Late Modern English considerably, the appearance of textbooks that were devoted to the subject and could be used by undergraduates was a welcome twenty-first-century development. The first such book, Beal (Reference Beal2004), appeared a little more than half a decade ago (see Smitterberg Reference Smitterberg2006 for an assessment). Given that such publications are still scarce, there is a need for books like An introduction to Late Modern English, which can both give teachers more options regarding course literature and link teaching to recent findings in this dynamic area of research.Footnote ¹

Tieken-Boon van Ostade aims at showing ‘how existing resources – primary texts, background literature, empirical studies, electronic databases – can be used to learn more about the period, its people and their language’ (p. x). The Late Modern period itself is defined as covering the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (p. ix). The author also mentions that she ‘will focus on the people of the age and their language’ and that her ‘account will draw upon insights from sociolinguistics’ (p. x). I shall therefore devote attention to how well the book meets this aim. However, since the title An introduction to Late Modern English implies that readers and teachers can expect the book also to contain a more general introduction to the period, I shall address its value from this perspective as well. As regards the structure of the book under review, chapter 1 sets the scene by providing a background to the Late Modern period; subsequent chapters address pronunciation, spelling, writers and vocabulary, grammar and grammar books, the role of social networks, and text types. I shall follow the same structure in this review and provide a selective summary and evaluation of each chapter in the order in which it appears, before ending the review with an overall assessment which also covers features of the book that are common to several chapters.

At the beginning of chapter 1, ‘English in the Late Modern period’, Tieken-Boon van Ostade notes that, contrary to the traditional assumption that Late Modern English is characterized by linguistic stability, language change can be expected to have taken place, considering the developments of individual genres during the period (e.g. the rise of the newspaper). Sections 1.1 and 1.2 both include information about William Clift (1775–1849), a social aspirer who changed his language to match that of the socio-economic group he aimed for, and who is mentioned in several sections of the textbook. The discussion in section 1.2 helps to set the scene for the outline of prescriptive works offering advice on language issues given in section 1.3. The next section is devoted to education. Among other things, the author addresses the Late Modern increase in literacy skills, women's opportunities for education, and the process by which English became a university subject. She also notes that literacy spread faster in the US than in Britain. In section 1.5, Tieken-Boon van Ostade discusses the two main aspects of literacy, viz. reading and writing. Issues addressed in this section include the importance of women as a target group for published texts – and as writers – as well as the growth of newspapers in Britain following the repeal of the stamp duty in 1855. In section 1.6, the author notes that the Late Modern period is characterized by increased geographical and social mobility, as well as by increased communication, and that pressure was put on socially mobile speakers to adapt their language to that of the new social networks which they joined; in doing so, such language users functioned as ‘bridges between different groups of speakers along which linguistic change might travel’ (p. 11). The concluding discussion in section 1.7 emphasizes the diversity of Late Modern English, including differences according to gender and region.

This chapter is written in a lucid and engaging style; for instance, the author's choice to foreground individual speakers’ lives is likely to appeal to student readers. The chapter is also a well-informed and up-to-date account, as evidenced by the many references to previous research, including several recent studies. One or two claims made in the chapter seem open to questioning; for instance, whereas Tieken-Boon van Ostade argues that literacy rates for women as well as men ‘rose significantly’ as a result of elementary education becoming compulsory in Britain (p. 6), Altick (Reference Altick1957: 171–2) claims that the Elementary Education Act of 1870 ‘did not significantly hasten the spread of literacy’ (Altick Reference Altick1957: 171), but rather ensured that literacy continued to spread and that it would include groups of speakers who had previously not received the necessary education. But on the whole, chapter 1 is informative and likely to increase readers’ interest in Late Modern English, and thus provides a very suitable introduction to the book.

In the opening section of chapter 2, ‘Evidence of pronunciation’, Tieken-Boon van Ostade comments on different types of sources for the pronunciation of Late Modern English (e.g. verse and contemporary comments), some of which receive more detailed treatment in the following sections. Section 2.2 is devoted to ‘[t]he language commentators’ (p. 19). The author demonstrates that interest in pronunciation increased in the late eighteenth century. She takes up features such as /h/-dropping, loss of the /hw/–/w/ distinction, the trap/bath split, and weakening and loss of non-pre-vocalic /r/ (with the concomitant appearance of intrusive /r/). Section 2.3 deals with evidence from novelists. Among others, Dickens and Thackeray are used as examples of authors who included features of non-standard pronunciation in their novels. Tieken-Boon van Ostade also discusses how the nineteenth-century interest in recording English dialects is reflected in novelists’ output. The fourth section focuses on the language of minimally schooled writers. The author shows that such writers’ lack of schooling meant that they spelt phonologically to some extent, which may provide clues to their pronunciation; for instance, foust instead of Standard English forced may indicate lack of rhoticity (p. 31). A brief concluding section returns to the topics of the difficulties involved in reconstructing Late Modern English pronunciation and the increased importance of accent as a social marker during the course of the period.

One of the attractive features of chapter 2 is that it is written from an ‘applied’ perspective. Tieken-Boon van Ostade frequently discusses matters that are relevant to readers who are about to do research on Late Modern English themselves; for instance, in the section on novelists, she notes that not all of Dickens’ depictions of non-standard speech are accurate descriptions of lower-class sociolects, and she is careful to comment on potential dangers involved in using various types of sources as evidence of Late Modern pronunciation. Furthermore, the examples of actual Late Modern text provided, such as an extract from Dickens’ Sketches by Boz illustrating the literary representation of non-standard speech (p. 27), are likely to stimulate readers to carry out their own investigations. However, in other respects, chapter 2 is less satisfactory than the other chapters in An introduction to Late Modern English. Most importantly, two things that I miss in the chapter are (i) a section that focuses on Late Modern English sound changes as such and their consequences for the inventory and distribution of English phonemes and (ii) a more detailed treatment of the development of Received Pronunciation. As regards sound changes, the reader now has to piece together information on some such changes from several different sections, which may make it difficult especially for students to get a clear picture of what happened to the system of English speech sounds between 1700 and 1900. Some developments that are currently not addressed explicitly in chapter 2 could also have been incorporated into such a section, e.g. the phonemicization of /ɜː/ and of centring diphthongs like /ɪə/ in varieties that lost non-pre-vocalic /r/ (see, for instance, MacMahon Reference MacMahon and Romaine1998: 403 on differences between the phoneme inventory of ‘polite’ late eighteenth-century London speech and that of Present-day Received Pronunciation). The scope of a textbook is of course limited, and Tieken-Boon van Ostade's choice to focus more on the value and reliability of sources for Late Modern English pronunciation contributes to the originality of her book. However, adding some more information on general developments in Late Modern pronunciation in an introductory section would arguably have put student readers in a better position to appreciate the more detailed, source-based account that Tieken-Boon van Ostade provides. Regarding Received Pronunciation, I would have liked to see more attention paid to the development of this accent; for instance, neither ‘RP’ nor ‘Received Pronunciation’ occurs as a main entry in the index. It is mentioned on several occasions that a non-localized standard arose, but more detail would have been welcome here, especially considering the sociolinguistic focus of the book under review.

Chapter 2 also has a few other, minor drawbacks. First, in order to label many of the vowel sounds discussed in the chapter, Tieken-Boon van Ostade uses lexical sets such as those identified in Wells (Reference Wells1982). This is a neat solution, but I would have liked to see Wells’ (Reference Wells1982: 120) keywords for the lexical sets used throughout. Tieken-Boon van Ostade sometimes uses other keywords, for instance bit and bet (p. 18) instead of Wells’ (Reference Wells1982) kit and dress. While Tieken-Boon van Ostade's practice has the advantage that keywords can form minimal pairs, there is a risk that student readers who have already encountered Wells’ keywords will become uncertain as to whether or not, say, bet and dress refer to the same lexical set. Secondly, on pp. 21–2, Tieken-Boon van Ostade claims that Fogg (Reference Fogg1792) provides evidence of the foot/strut split by assigning the vowels in woo and bud to different sounds. However, unless these vowels belonged to different sets in the late eighteenth century than they do today, they rather exemplify that the strut and goose sets were not identical to Fogg.Footnote ² What appears to be missing from Fogg's (Reference Fogg1792: 8) list of English sounds is instead a separate foot set. Tieken-Boon van Ostade argues that Fogg's scheme does not provide any evidence ‘for the distinction between the pool/pull vowels’ (p. 21), which I take to mean that the goose and foot sets would have the same vowel sound in Fogg (Reference Fogg1792). However, unless my interpretation of Fogg (Reference Fogg1792) is incorrect, the variety that he describes rather had the same vowel in the foot and strut sets, which differed from the vowel used in the goose set. In Fogg's (Reference Fogg1792: 24) account, words that have the vowel sound typically corresponding to the spelling oo (Fogg represents the vowel sound as ‘oo’ in this context) belong to the goose set (Fogg's examples are cool, noon and rood). In contrast, Fogg's list of exceptions, where oo is not pronounced as in cool etc., includes words that belong to the strut set (blood and flood) and the foot set (crooked, foot, forsook, good, hood, look, shook, soot, stood, took, wood and wool). All exceptions that belong to either the strut or the foot set receive the same pronunciation code, viz. ‘u’, which is also used in the strut word bud in Fogg's (Reference Fogg1792: 8) ‘scheme or scale of sounds’.Footnote ³ This suggests that the variety Fogg describes did not have the foot/strut split. Fogg (Reference Fogg1796: 157) is aware of a new pronunciation of the ‘u’ vowel current in ‘the genteeler circles’, but he seems to describe this new pronunciation as applying to all cases where he has ‘u’ rather than as a split.

The introductory section of chapter 3, ‘Spelling systems’, chiefly addresses late twentieth-century spelling variation; the remainder of the chapter is divided into sections on eighteenth-century printers’ spelling, the dual spelling system in place in the 1700s, sociolinguistic aspects of spelling, spelling in the nineteenth century, and Webster's spelling reform. Issues treated in the section on eighteenth-century printers’ conventions include the use of the ‘long s’ and of ligatures such as æ, spelling variation, e.g. -ic vs -ick in words like music(k), and the disappearance of the practice of beginning all nouns with a capital letter. In the next section, Tieken-Boon van Ostade demonstrates that Johnson's 1755 dictionary did not fix English spelling, as it includes differences from present-day usage, and as people – including Johnson himself – often used spelling variants other than those given in the dictionary in private texts such as letters. Spelling in eighteenth-century printed texts, which was controlled by printers, might thus differ considerably from contemporary usage in private texts. The section also includes information on how spelling was taught. Section 3.4, ‘Spelling as a social phenomenon’, addresses gender-related and socio-economic differences in literacy and schooling; it also shows that tolerance of ‘incorrect’ spelling decreased during the eighteenth century. In the section on the nineteenth century, it is mentioned that the teaching of spelling improved and that spelling became a crucial aspect of social acceptability, although differences between private and public spelling persisted. The section on Noah Webster's spelling reforms treats not only the spellings introduced by Webster that came to be part of American English and his reasons for introducing them, but also some more radical spellings suggested by Webster, which were abandoned after being criticized (e.g. hed and hiz).

Chapter 3 is an eminently readable introduction to spelling and literacy in the Late Modern period: it contains a wealth of valuable information, which is typically presented in an engaging style. Occasionally, structural improvements might be possible; for instance, section 3.4 could have included cross-references to sections 1.4 and 1.5, as all three sections address aspects of literacy. However, the index does include entries for ‘literacy’ belonging to all of these sections. But on the whole, I found chapter 3 very rewarding.

As the title of chapter 4, ‘Writers and the lexicon’, indicates, Tieken-Boon van Ostade addresses lexical innovation and individual writers’ contribution to the English lexicon in this chapter. In the introductory section, she links the nineteenth-century peak in lexical innovation in English with ‘the results of the Industrial Revolution and other important cultural and social developments of the time, which produced many new words’ (p. 53). She also mentions some caveats that need to be taken into account when basing studies on the OED online and lists Late Modern sociocultural developments that are reflected in the list of new words, such as technological innovations and contact with other cultures. In the second section, which is devoted to using the OED online as a database, Tieken-Boon van Ostade addresses advantages and drawbacks associated with using the dictionary. Section 4.3 considers lexical innovation from the perspective of individual people listed as ‘first cited authors’ for items in the OED online. Tieken-Boon van Ostade focuses on about forty speakers of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English – most of whom are authors mentioned in Tieken-Boon van Ostade (Reference Tieken-Boon van Ostade and Mugglestone2006) and/or in the book under review – and looks at the words for which these speakers are listed as providing the earliest recorded evidence in the OED online. The resulting word lists are also used to comment on more general trends in Late Modern lexical innovation, such as the popularity of the un- prefix (p. 63). The individual perspective is continued in section 4.4, where Tieken-Boon van Ostade considers the members of the ‘Lunar Society’ as first cited authors in the OED online; her aim is ‘[t]o show the extent to which additions to the English lexicon can be attributed to individuals who were part of the developments in science and technology that contributed to the Industrial Revolution’ (p. 65). Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, she found that few members had contributed any large number of first recorded uses to the dictionary. A separate section is then devoted to the language of dictionary-makers, in which, among other things, Tieken-Boon van Ostade problematizes the presence of dictionary-makers as first recorded users of items in the OED. In the concluding section, she compares her account with that presented in Beal (Reference Beal2004), mentions that there was criticism of the new technical vocabulary that partly paralleled the ‘inkhorn controversy’ of Early Modern English, and notes that there are also words which have disappeared from the language since Late Modern times.

Chapter 4 is clearly of considerable value for readers who wish to base their own investigations of the Late Modern English lexicon on dictionary resources, especially the OED online. Tieken-Boon van Ostade is careful to point to both the advantages and the potential pitfalls associated with this method. The structure of the chapter is quite clear overall, although I would have preferred to see all the relevant information on using the OED online as a source of data presented in the same section. I would also have liked more space to be devoted to general trends in Late Modern lexical innovation before the focus shifts to individual people's contributions to the lexicon. Sections 4.3 and 4.4 might have been shortened – and perhaps conflated – to make room for more material on the English language as a whole, and perhaps for a section devoted to possible contributions to the English lexicon from extraterritorial varieties of the language. These minor points of criticism notwithstanding, chapter 4 is a valuable and research-oriented chapter.

The fifth chapter of the book is entitled ‘Grammar and grammars’. In the introductory section, Tieken-Boon van Ostade makes clear that, despite the relative scarcity of changes to the system of Late Modern English grammar, there was a great deal of variation in usage, and such variation is often of a sociolinguistic or stylistic nature; for instance, Austen had ungenteel characters use non-standard constructions as part of character description in her novels. Tieken-Boon van Ostade also comments on the rise of prescriptivism in grammar in the Late Modern period. In section 5.2, she addresses sociolinguistic stereotypes (e.g. the use of the objective case in clauses such as It is me) and markers (e.g. the subjunctive) in Late Modern English. Section 5.3 is devoted to a comparison between precept and actual usage, and treats issues such as variation in past-participle forms (e.g. wrote vs written) and grammatical differences between letters and printed texts. In section 5.4, the influence that prescriptive grammarians may have had on the English language is discussed. As the author notes (p. 89), both the number of grammars and the size of their syntax sections grew during the eighteenth century. Among the features treated here are the choices between shall and will and between who and whom. Section 5.5 focuses on recent, corpus-based research on Late Modern English, which is connected to other issues relevant to the study of Late Modern English grammar in the concluding section (5.6).

Chapter 5 contains a great deal of valuable information on Late Modern English grammar. It is to Tieken-Boon van Ostade's credit that her account includes several recent studies; in particular, devoting a section to recent and ongoing research is an excellent idea which is likely to appeal to readers, and which could also have been used in other chapters. However, the section division arguably makes some of the information contained in chapter 5 less than ideally accessible for students. In particular, the concerns of sections 5.2–4 appear to overlap; for instance, both sections 5.2 and 5.3 address linguistic features used by novelists to indicate that the characters who use them are of low social standing, and the issue of the influence of prescriptive grammarians (5.4) is connected to a comparison between grammatical strictures and actual usage (5.3). Consequently, I sometimes found it difficult to guess beforehand in which of these three sections a given linguistic feature is taken up. A section division according to the type of linguistic feature treated, where comments on sociolinguistic issues are made in connection with each feature discussed, might have made Tieken-Boon van Ostade's account easier to follow for student readers without losing the valuable sociolinguistic focus that characterizes this book. There were also a few passages where I did not agree wholly with the author's interpretation of secondary sources, such as her discussion of Grund & Walker's (Reference Grund, Walker, Kytö, Rydén and Smitterberg2006) results regarding the subjunctive in adverbial clauses. Tieken-Boon van Ostade (p. 85) suggests that the slightly higher proportion of subjunctive forms (three percentage points) used by female letter-writers in the late 1800s compared with the beginning of the century may be due to linguistic insecurity on the part of female language-users, as this result goes against the general trend towards decreased use of the subjunctive in the material. However, as Grund & Walker (Reference Grund, Walker, Kytö, Rydén and Smitterberg2006: 97) note, it is really the low proportion of subjunctives used by female letter-writers in the early nineteenth century that stands out from the other results and is in need of explanation, as women's figures for the other periods tally fairly well with overall distributions in the corpus.

In chapter 6, Tieken-Boon van Ostade focuses on an important explanatory factor in socially conditioned language change, viz. social networks. After an introductory section, Tieken-Boon van Ostade discusses the increased social and geographical mobility that characterizes the Late Modern period in section 6.2, and links these factors to language users’ openness to linguistic influences. In section 6.3, social network analysis is introduced; among other things, Tieken-Boon van Ostade explains the differences between open and closed networks and their relevance to linguistics. This is followed by an examination of some Late Modern networks in section 6.4, and by an account of Late Modern women's language in the light of social network analysis in section 6.5. Gender is also addressed in the concluding section of the chapter.

Chapter 6 is indicative of the author's expertise in social network analysis. The distribution of several linguistic features is explained and linked to social network theory in an admirable fashion, and the text reads well, although it might have been advisable to explain the mechanisms of social network analysis earlier in the chapter than section 6.3. Chapter 6 is thus unusual in successfully attempting to connect linguistic theory with facts of usage in a textbook on the history of English, which makes it one of the most rewarding chapters of the book.

The seventh and final chapter of the book under review is devoted to Late Modern English text types. In the introductory section, Tieken-Boon van Ostade introduces the concept of text type. She then devotes separate sections to each of seven text types: letters, journals, memoirs, depositions, wills, recipes and newspapers. In these sections, text-type-specific information is provided. For instance, issues addressed in the section on journals include the definition of the text type, typical features of journal English, and the possibility of using texts belonging to this text type as a source of unmonitored language. The concluding section of the chapter treats matters such as our access to various Late Modern text types.

Chapter 7 is both informative and well structured. Tieken-Boon van Ostade takes up a great many issues that are of considerable importance to readers who are about to base research on – or compile a corpus containing texts from – one or several of the text types covered. Many of the text types included are of clear relevance to research on Late Modern English, either because they enable comparisons with Early Modern English (e.g. letters) or because they went through important developments within the Late Modern period itself (e.g. newspapers). However, I miss a separate section devoted to doing research on Late Modern text types. For instance, information on concordancers and the compilation of frequency lists is given in the section on wills, but this passage would also be relevant to research on other text types. In addition, section 7.5 might have been called ‘Courtroom language’ or something to that effect rather than ‘Depositions’, as Tieken-Boon van Ostade's treatment appears to include texts that many researchers would classify as cross-examinations rather than depositions. Overall, chapter 7 is of great value, and will be very useful to readers who are about to undertake empirical research on Late Modern English from a text-type perspective.

An introduction to Late Modern English clearly presents an up-to-date account of the language of the period, as witnessed by, among other things, the helpful inclusion of a list of links to relevant websites. Tieken-Boon van Ostade's choice to devote separate chapters to highly topical areas of research on Late Modern English, such as social network analysis and text-type analysis, clearly adds to the originality of her book. The research questions and suggestions for further reading that the author supplies for each chapter are likely to be appreciated by both students and teachers. Another feature of Tieken-Boon van Ostade's book that increases its value as well as its originality is the inclusion of a researcher's perspective; students interested in becoming scholars will find the book very informative indeed. The text of the book is also well edited, with relatively few infelicities, although I spotted ‘byc an’ for what I presume should be bycʒ(e)an or bycg(e)an (p. 26). As I have mentioned in my discussion of individual chapters, there are cases where I do not agree with the author's interpretation of the available evidence, but most of Tieken-Boon van Ostade's claims are well founded. The inclusion of an index makes it easier to find information on particular topics. The references section provides readers with a wealth of sources to turn to for more information on specific aspects of Late Modern English. However, one such aspect that receives comparatively little attention concerns varieties of English other than those spoken in Great Britain. I would have liked to see Late Modern developments in extraterritorial varieties receive more attention in this book, in order to reflect our increased knowledge in this area, as demonstrated in recent publications such as Hickey (Reference Hickey2004) and Fritz (Reference Fritz2007).

One potential problem with Tieken-Boon van Ostade's textbook is the presentation of information on Late Modern English as a linguistic system. While the book provides a great deal of useful information presented from a sociolinguistic perspective, two features of An introduction to Late Modern English may make it difficult especially for student readers to access information on the actual phonological and syntactic developments taking place in the Late Modern period. First, as chapters 2 and 5 are not organized according to the types of linguistic features addressed, readers looking for information on a given development may find it difficult to locate all of the relevant facts. To some extent, this difficulty is alleviated by the index and by the author's use of cross-references that help readers to make connections between sections and chapters. However, more cross-references would have been welcome, and the index seems partly to be organized according to sociolinguistic concepts rather than linguistic ones, which may make discussions of linguistic features difficult to locate for readers. For example, topics such as be vs have with mutative intransitives and concord are listed under the main entry ‘grammatical strictures’ and not as independent entries. While Tieken-Boon van Ostade has certainly produced a high-quality textbook with a sociolinguistic focus of the type she outlines in the preface (see above), the title may lead potential readers to expect a more ‘traditional’ book, where the linguistic developments themselves receive more emphasis as regards the content and structure of the text.

Secondly, Tieken-Boon van Ostade occasionally appears to take students’ knowledge of phonological and grammatical features and terms for granted to a greater extent than may be justified. For instance, the bath set is not commented on when introduced; readers who do not know that this lexical set comprises ‘those words whose citation form contains the stressed vowel /æ/ in [General American], but /ɑː/ in RP’ (Wells Reference Wells1982: 133) thus need to go to Wells (Reference Wells1982), to whom Tieken-Boon van Ostade refers, for clarification. Some other terms that occur in the text should also have been explained in more detail for the benefit of student readers in particular, e.g. ‘obstruent affricativisation’ (p. 33). On the other hand, the author supplies readers with a wealth of examples of linguistic features and references to works where they are treated in more detail, which partly compensates for the occasional lack of explicit definitions.

In sum, An introduction to Late Modern English is a welcome addition to existing resources for the study of the English of the Late Modern period. The book will be very valuable primarily to advanced undergraduate and graduate students who study it either together with a more feature-based account or as a sourcebook for doing their own research. In addition, the book contains a great deal of information that will be of considerable value to sociolinguists in general. It is hoped that future editions of the book will continue to reflect our steadily growing knowledge of this fascinating part of the history of English, as well as address some of the issues discussed above.