While few outside of Guernsey will have heard of Thomas Martin (1839–1921), his unpublished translations into Guernesiais of the Bible, and a hundred plays by Shakespeare, Pierre and Thomas Corneille, Voltaire and Longfellow, handwritten in 295 exercise books, represent the largest corpus of prose from a single author in Channel Island French. Now housed in two collections at the Guernsey Island Archives, Martin's work presents a veritable treasure trove for the historical dialectologist, which is investigated and analysed with consummate skill by Mari Jones in this fascinating and highly readable monograph.

The first three chapters present the background to Guernsey, the local Norman varieties and Thomas Martin himself. Chapter 1 traces the sociohistorical development of the Channel Islands and the interplay between Norman, English and French as spoken at different periods, paying particular attention to the nineteenth century, when extensive anglicisation took hold. Citing evidence from local sources, including newspaper editorials, Jones shows how fears for the future of Guernesiais were expressed as early as 1846, prompting efforts among enthusiasts to enhance its status. The main features of the dialect are sketched in Chapter 2, which compares Guernesiais to other Channel Island and mainland Norman varieties. Jones’ healthy scepticism for linguistic labels such as ‘Norman’ shows her to be ‘continuator’ rather than a ‘separator’ in Romance dialectological terms, and her close analysis of a wide range of sources is appropriately critical in its approach. She notes, for example, that the Guernsey informant for the Atlas Linguistique de la France might not have been a native of the island, and rejects the popularly held view that internal variation in Guernesiais corresponds meaningfully to local administrative boundaries. Chapter 3 is devoted to Martin and his work, and while the focus is understandably on the context and significance of the latter, Jones offers enough personal information (in 3.1) to provide a rounded portrait of the man. We learn of his career, the circumstances of his marriage, and the stubborn eccentricities of old age, one of which reputedly caused his death (his refusal to wear an overcoat on a cold day appears to have induced heart failure). We also learn of Martin's atheism, which suggested strongly that his translation of the Bible was prompted more by a desire to promote or defend the Guernsey tongue than by spiritual concerns. Jones is similarly meticulous in establishing Martin's source text, concluding from the evidence that he probably worked from a French Bible, but also consulted the English Authorised Version of 1611.

Linguistic analysis of the manuscripts themselves takes up the second half of the book. In Chapter 4, Jones demonstrates how Martin's orthography draws on but remains independent of the French-influenced conventions of earlier poets, notably Métivier. He eschews, for example, the unpronounced final –r of regular infinitives ending in -[aj], preferring –ai to –aïr, and is not afraid to innovate where necessary, e.g. in the use of the digraph ah to represent Guernesiais [ɒ]. Indeed, Martin's usage evolves in a manner reflecting ‘a seemingly conscious aim of providing a more phonetic representation of Guernesiais’ (p. 74): Jones traces the shift in later translations from les, des to laie, daie and from chinqkième to shinqkième in a clear attempt to distance his own usage from French orthographic principles. Chapter 5 considers the translations as a reflection of 19th Century Guernesiais, while the final Chapter 6 examines their value as a source of new information on the dialect. The former unearths some delightful English calques, for example, ‘je vous dis pour de seur’ (‘I tell you for sure’). While one cannot know pour de seur to what extent transfer from the source language influenced Martin's usage, Jones carefully compares the French and English translation sub-corpora to eliminate its effects and determine which forms were in fact established in Guernsey usage. This technique is again deployed in the final chapter, as Jones meticulously pieces together evidence for subjunctive and auxiliary usage in nineteenth-century Guernesiais, about which relatively little is known. Among other nuggets of information, Jones identifies frequent use of a third person reflexive pronoun leux, which has cognates in other Channel Island varieties but has been hitherto undocumented in Guernesiais. Though extensively researched and punctiliously referenced, all three chapters are admirably focused and only occasionally – as, for example, in the case of the lengthy section 4.4 on liaison – might one argue that the detail is unnecessary or excessive. The book concludes with an Appendix containing a sample of linguistically annotated extracts from across the range of Martin's work.

This book offers an object lesson to anyone embarking on the painstaking linguistic detective work required to reconstruct an obsolescent and minimally codified variety from fragmentary written records. Those familiar with Jones’ earlier work will recognise the twin hallmarks of meticulous attention to detail and a refreshing readiness to challenge received views. Both are deployed to excellent effect here in an outstanding contribution to Romance dialectology.