Early Mercian Literature: Bibliography

A Literary History of Mercia: Bibliography (in progress)

The following bibliographies cover, in order of publication year, items discussing Mercian linguistic features and Mercian text and book production and cultural history.

Anglian (Mercian) Linguistic Features

Garnett, R.,'English Dialects', Quarterly Review 55 (1836), 354-87
Skeat, W. W., The Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian Versions, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1871-87), p. vii (St Matthew) and pp. xxii-xv (St John)
Zupitza, J., 'Mercisches aus der Hs. Royal 2 A 20 im Britischen Museum', Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 33 (1889), 47-66
Jordan, R., Eigentümlichkeiten des anglischen Wortschatzes, Anglistische Forschungen 17 (Heidelberg, 1906)
Wildhagen, K., ‘Studien zum Psalterium Romanum in England und zu seinen Glossierungen’, Festschrift für Lorenz Morsbach, ed. F. Holthausen and H. Spies, Studien zur englischen Philologie 50 (Halle, 1913), pp. 417-72, at 427-41
Luick, K., Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache (Stuttgart, 1914-21),§ 24 [brief survey of surviving texts; with further coverage of specific Mercian features also passim]
Kuhn, S. M., A Grammar of the Mercian Dialect (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1935)
Kuhn, S. M., A Grammar of the Mercian Dialect (Chicago, 1938)
Kuhn, S. M., ‘The Dialect of the Corpus Glossary’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 54 (1939), 1-19
Kuhn, S. M., 'E and Æ in Farman's Mercian Glosses', Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 60 (1045), 631-69
Kuhn, S. M., ‘Synonyms in the Old English Bede’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 46 (1947), 168-7
Kuhn, S. M., 'From Canterbury to Lichfield', Speculum 23 (1948), 591-629
Campbell, J. J., ‘The Dialect Vocabulary of the OE Bede’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 50 (1951), 349-72
Sisam, K., 'Dialect Origins of the Earlier Old English Verse', in his Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 119-39
Brunner, K., Altenglische Grammatik, 3rd edn (Tübingen, 1956), pp. 8-10
Campbell, A., Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1959), §§ 8-12 and §610.7 (declination of the national name Mierce, 'Mercians')
Wilson, R. M., ‘The Provenance of the Vespasian Psalter Gloss: The Linguistic Evidence’, The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History and Culture Presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. P. Clemoes (London, 1959), pp. 292-310
Ball, C. J. E., 'Mercian 'Second Fronting', Archivum Linguisticum 14 (1962), 130-45
Schabram, H., Superbia: Studien zum altenglischen Wortschatz. Vol. 1 Die dialektale und zeitliche Verbreitung des Wortguts (Munich, 1965)
Gneuss, H., ‘The Origin of Standard Old English and Æthelwold’s School at Winchester’, Anglo-Saxon England 1 (1972), 63-83, at 66-8 and 82
Sweet, H., A Second Anglo-Saxon Reader: Archaic and Dialectal, 2nd edn rev. by T. F. Hoad (Oxford, 1978), pp. 115-71 [Anglian texts / excerpts]
Wenisch, F., Spezifisch anglisches Wortgut in den nordhumbrischen Interlinearglossierungen des Lukasevangeliums, Anglistische Forschungen 132 (Heidelberg, 1979)
Dresher, B. E., 'The Mercian Second Fronting: A Case of Rule Loss in Old English', Linguistic Inquiry 11 1980), 47-73
Kotzor, G., ed., Das altenglische Martyrologium, Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Kl. ns 88.1–2, 2 vols (Munich, 1981), I, 325-405
Toon, T. E., The Politics of Early Old English Sound Change, Quantitative Analyses of Linguistic Structure 2 (New York, 1983)
Hogg, R. M., Review of Toon, The Politics of Early Old English Sound Change, Journal of Linguistics 21 (1985), 245-50
Hogg, R., ‘On the Impossibility of Old English Dialectology’, Luick Revisited, ed. D. Kastovsky and G. Bauer, Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 288 (Tübingen, 1985), pp. 183-203
Nielsen, H. F., Old English and the Continental Germanic Languages: A Survey of Morphological and Phonological Interrelations 2nd edn (Innsbruck, 1985), pp. 223-52
Mitchell, B., Old English Syntax, 2 vols (Oxford, 1985), passim, e.g. § 440; §§104-112
Hofstetter, W., Winchester und der spätaltenglische Sprachgebrauch: Untersuchungen zur geographischen und zeitlichen Verbreitung altenglischer Synonyme, Münchener Universitätsschriften 14 (Munich, 1987), pp. 156-541 [Survey of texts containing little or no Winchester vocabulary]
Seebold, E., 'Winchester und Canterbury: Zum spätaltenglischen Sprachgebrauch', Anglia 107 (1989), 52-60
Toon, T. E., ‘Old English Dialects’, The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol 1: The Beginnings to 1066 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 409-51
Kitson, P. R., 'Old English Dialects and the Stages of the Transition to Middle English', Folio Linguistica Historica 11 (1992 for 1990), 27-87
Fulk, R. D., A History of Old English Meter (Philadelphia, 1992), pp. 45-7, 272, 286, 294-8, 304-5, 343-5, 390-1
Seebold, E., ‘Regional gebundene Wörter in Wærferths Übersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen’, Anglo-Saxonica: Beiträge zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte der englischen Sprache und zur altenglischen Literatur, Festschrift für Hans Schabram zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. K. R. Grinda and C.-D. Wetzel (Munich, 1993), pp. 251-77, at 273-7
Lass, R., Old English: A Historical Linguistic Companion (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 170-1
Kitson, P. R., ‘The Nature of Old English Dialect Distributions, Mainly as Exhibited in Charter Boundaries’, Mediaeval Dialectology, ed. J. Fisiak (Berlin, 1995), pp. 43-135
Nielsen, H. F., The Continental Backgrounds of English and its Insular Development until 1154, NOWELE sv 19 (Odense, 1998), pp. 95-9
Lowe, K., ‘On the Plausibility of Old English Dialectology’, Folia Linguistica Historica (2001), 67-102
Schreiber, C., ‘Dialects in Contact in Ninth-Century England’, in Bookmarks from the Past: Studies in Honour of Helmut Gneuss, ed. L. Kornexl and U. Lenker (Frankfurt a. M., 2003), pp. 1-31, at 10-17
Hines, J., 'The Writing of English in Kent: Contexts and Influences from the Sixth to the Ninth Century', NOWELE 50 (2007), 63-92
Fulk, R. D., ‘Anglian Dialect Features in Old English Anonymous Homiletic Literature: A Survey, with Preliminary Findings’, Studies in the History of the English Language IV: Empirical and Analytical Advances in the Study of English Language Change, ed. S. M. Fitzmaurice and D. Minkova (Berlin, 2008), pp. 81-100
Klaeber's Beowulf, ed. R. D. Fulk, R. E. Bjork and J. D. Niles (Toronto, 2008), pp. clvii-clviii
Fulk, R. D., ‘Localizing and Dating Old English Anonymous Prose, and How the Inherent Problems Relate to Anglo-Saxon Legislation’, English Law before Magna Carta: Felix Liebermann and Die Gesetz der Angelsachsen, ed. S. Jurasinski, L. Oliver and A. Rabin (Leiden, 2010), pp. 59-79
Hogg, R. M., A Grammar of Old English, vol. 1 Phonology (Oxford, 2011), pp. 5-7
Fulk, R. D. and S. Jurasinski, ed., The Old English Canons of Theodore, Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series 25 (Oxford, 2012), pp. xxviii-xxxv [Anglian features in the Old English Canons of Theodore]
Fulk, R. D., ‘Anglian Features in Late West Saxon Prose’, Analysing Older English, ed. D. Denison, R. Bermúdez-Otero, C. McCully and E. Moore (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 63-74
Gneuss, H., ‘The Old English Language’, The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. M. Godden and M. Lapidge, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 19-49
Hebda, A., 'Phonological Variables', The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, ed. J. M. Hernández-Campoy and J. C. Conde-Silvester (Chichester, 2014), pp. 237-52, at 242-4
Ringe, D. and A. Taylor, The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English 2 (Oxford, 2014) [passim]
Seiler, A., The Scripting of the Germanic Languages: A Comparative Study of 'Spelling Difficulties' in Old English, Old High German and Old Saxon, Medienwandel, Medienwechsel, Medienwissen 30 (Zurich, 2014), pp. 49-53
Fulk, R. D., An Introductory Grammar of Old English, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 463 (Tempe, 2014), pp. 118-29
Clark, G., 'The Anglo-Saxons and Superbia: Finding a Word for it' , Old English Philology: Studies in Honour of R. D. Fulk, ed. L. Neidorf, R. J. Pascual and T. Shippey, Anglo-Saxon Studies 31 (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 172-89
Blair, J., Building Anglo-Saxon England (Princeton, 2018) [pp. 82-3 and 193-219 administrative vocabulary]
Timofeeva, O., Sociolinguistic Variation in Old English: Records of Communities and People, Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 13 (Amsterdam, 2022) [passim, on the Mercian group of scholars in King Alfred's circle]

Mercian Text and Book Production and Cultural History

Vleeskruyer, R., ed., The Life of St. Chad: An Old English Homily (Amsterdam, 1953)
Sisam, K., 'Canterbury, Lichfield, and the Vespasian Psalter', Review of English Studies 7 (1956), 1-10 and 113-31
Kuhn, S. M., 'Some Early Mercian Manuscripts', Review of English Studies 8 (1957), 355-74
Vleeskruyer, R., Review of P. Mertens-Fonck, A Glossary of the Vespasian Psalter, English Studies 44 (1963), 134-5
Whitelock, D., 'The Prose of Alfred's Reign', Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. E. G. Stanley (London, 1966), pp. 67-103
Brooks, N., The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (Leicester, 1984)
Langefeld, B., ‘A Third Old English Translation of Part of Gregory’s Dialogues, this Time Embedded in the Rule of Chrodegang’, Anglo-Saxon England 15 (1986), 197-204
Brown, M., 'Paris, Bibliothèque National, lat. 10861 and the Scriptorium of Christ Church, Canterbury', Anglo-Saxon England 15 (1986), 119-37
Bately, J. M., ‘Old English Prose before and during the Reign of Alfred’, Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988), 93-138, at 98-114
Langefeld, B., ‘Regula canonicorum or Regula monasterialis uitae? The Rule of Chrodegang and Archbishop Wulfred’s Reforms at Canterbury’, Anglo-Saxon England 25 (1996), 21–36
Coates, R.,'The Scriptorium of the Mercian Rushworth Gloss: A Bilingual Perspective', Notes and Queries 44 (1997), 453-8
Keynes, S., ‘King Alfred and the Mercians’, Kings, Currency and Alliances: History and Coinage of Southern England in the Ninth Century, ed. M. A. S. Blackburn and D. N. Dumville, Studies in Anglo-Saxon History 9 (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 1–45
Gretsch, M., 'The Junius Psalter Gloss: its Historical and Cultural Context', Anglo-Saxon England 29 (2000), 85-121
Brown, M. P., ‘Mercian Manuscripts? The ‘Tiberius’ Group and Its Historical Context’, Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, ed. J. P. Brown and C. A. Farr (London, 2001), pp. 279-90
Keynes, S., ‘Mercia and Wessex in the Ninth Century’, Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, ed. J. P. Brown and C. A. Farr (London, 2001), pp. 310-28
Liuzza, R. M., ‘Religious Prose’, A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature, ed. P. Pulsiano and E. Treharne, Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture 11 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 233-50
Roberts, J., ‘Hagiography and Literature: The Case of Guthlac of Crowland’, Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, ed. J. P. Brown and C. A. Farr (London, 2001), pp. 69-86
Stanton, R., The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 56-9
Cumberledge, N., 'Reading Between the Lines: The Place of Mercia within an Expanding Wessex', Midland History 27 (2002), 1-15
Schreiber, C., ‘Dialects in Contact in Ninth-Century England’, in Bookmarks from the Past: Studies in Honour of Helmut Gneuss, ed. L. Kornexl and U. Lenker (Frankfurt a. M., 2003), pp. 1-31
Foot, S., Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England c.600-900 (Cambridge, 2006)
Pratt, D., The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge, 2007)
Tinti, F., Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester from c.870 to c.1100 (Farnham, 2010)
Rowley, S., The Old English Version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica, Anglo-Saxon Studies 16 (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 41-6
Gem, R., Architecture, Liturgy and Romanitas at All Saints' Church, Brixworth, Brixworth Lectures ss 8 (Leicester, 2011)
Irvine, S., ‘English Literature in the Ninth Century’, The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature, ed. C. A. Lees (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 209-31, at 212-13
Rauer, C., ed., The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary, Anglo-Saxon Texts 10 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), pp. 13-15
Rauer, C., ‘Errors and Textual Problems in the Old English Martyrology’, Neophilologus 97 (2013), 147-64
Waite, G., ‘The Old English Bede and the Glosses in the Tiberius Bede’, Parergon 30 (2013), 1-49
Waite, G., ‘Translation Style, Lexical Systems, Dialect Vocabulary, and the Manuscript Transmission of the Old English Bede’, Medium Ævum 83 (2014), 1-48
Toswell, M. J., The Anglo-Saxon Psalter, Medieval Church Studies 10 (Turnhout, 2014)
Irvine, S., ‘The Alfredian Prefaces and Epilogues’, A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. N. G. Discenza and P. E. Szarmach, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 58 (Leiden, 2015), pp. 143-70
Johnson, D. F., ‘Alfredian Apocrypha: The Old English Dialogues and Bede’, A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. N. G. Discenza and P. E. Szarmach, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 58 (Leiden, 2015), pp. 368-95
Rowley, S. M., 'The Long Ninth Century and the Prose of King Alfred's Reign', 2015, http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com
Keynes, S., ‘Alfred the Great and the Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’, A Companion to Alfred the Great, ed. N. G. Discenza and P. E. Szarmach, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 58 (Leiden, 2015), pp. 13-46
Waite, G., 'The Preface to the Old English Bede: Authorship, Transmission, and Connection with the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List', Anglo-Saxon England 44 (2015), 31-93
Rauer, C., ‘The Old English Martyrology and Anglo-Saxon Glosses’, Latinity and Identity in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. R. Stephenson and E. V. Thornbury (Toronto, 2016)
Rusche, P. G. Rusche, 'The Glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Benedictine Reform: Was Aldred Trained in the Southumbrian Glossing Tradition?', The Old English Gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels: Language, Author and Context, ed. J. Fernánez Cuesta and S. M. Pons-Sanz (Berlin, 2016), pp. 61-77
Blair, J., Building Anglo-Saxon England (Princeton, 2018) [pp. 106-7 and 179-231 geopolitics]
Cumberledge, N., 'Reading Between the Lines: The Place of Mercia within an Expanding Wessex', Midland History 27 (2002), 1-15
Rusche, P. G., ‘The Old English Martyrology and the Canterbury Aldhelm Scholia’ (forthcoming)
Wragg, S., ‘The Development of Vernacular Literature in Eighth- and Ninth-Century Mercia’ (DPhil dissertation, University of Oxford, in progress)

Electronic Resources

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