Paradigm, Vol. 2 (2), (October, 2000)

An Annotated Bibliography of Nineteenth-Century Grammars

Manfred Görlach (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1998), ix + 395pp., $89, Hfl.178.00.

Reviewed by Bernard Austin

Just as the 18th century sought to fix the English language by rules, so the 19th century was to provide books of instruction for a vast and accelerating development of educational institutions. Some of these innumerable books, with more or less justification, held the field well into the first half of the 20th century. When today one hears grumbles about ‘bad grammar’ or ‘they don’t teach grammar any more’, one may be reasonably sure that some lingering and hazy recollection of clause analysis is somewhere at work.

There are rules of a kind -- and no two people have agreed, or are likely to agree, what they are. Certainly they were expressed so diversely in the 19th century that Matthew Arnold pleaded for a single grammar for the school teaching of English, or at least for an agreement about terminology. After Arnold’s time, steps -- of a sort -- were taken to work out such an agreement, but it was never uniformly adopted.

The compiler of this new Annotated Bibliography, Manfred Görlach, has set out in alphabetical order under the authors’ names some 2,000 titles of 19th-century grammars or school books in English. In general, the 19th-century custom of printing long-winded titles has been followed here because they include more or less direct evidence of the contents of the books. Much of the bibliographical evidence has been taken from libraries and publishers’ and booksellers’ advertisements and catalogues. Books of the kind listed by Görlach tended to run through many editions or printings, and he has settled on giving the first and last of those known. He also gives in coded form present library locations of the books in his list. Bracketed notes on titles include other information in short score. Cross references by means of abbreviations and sigils can be rather confusing.

Clearly, this is a vast undertaking and Görlach suggests that his book ‘should be a useful starting-point from which to begin a more proper research into the characteristic features of these grammars and the specific aims of their authors’ (p.13). The short-comings of the work have already been dealt with elsewhere and need not be explored here. As things stand, the book will help those who seek guidance in this particular field. Görlach modestly requests notification of possible additions and adjustments to this

bibliography. School books, by their very nature, tend to disintegrate and disappear, and this invitation might well retrieve some -- perhaps many -- items from literary and historical neglect.

Paradigm Catalogue Textbook Colloquium