Mercian Network

Resources on the History, Literature, Language and Material Culture of Mercia

Secondary Literature

Anglian (Mercian) Language

• 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
• Holthausen, F., ed., Beowulf nebst den kleineren Denkmälern der Heldensage, 4th edn. (Heidelberg, 1914) [includes reconstruction of lines 1-25 of Beowulf in its Mercian 'Urtext' version, dropped again in the 6th edn (1929), 'da ich dieser jetzt zu skeptisch gegenüberstehe', p. vi]
• 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
• Wynn, J. B., 'An Examination of the Language of the Corpus, Epinal and Erfurt Glossaries' (PhD diss., University of Manchester, 1956)
• 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)
• Fullmer, D. H., 'Generative Inflectional Morphology and Phonology of Mercian Old English' (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1970)
• Terrebonne, R. A., 'A Generative Phonology of the Mercian Old English Verb' (PhD diss., Louisiana State University, 1971)
• 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
• Koopman, W. F., 'Mercian Second Fronting and Ordering Theories', Neophilologus 60 (1976), 280-96
• Toon, T. E., 'Variation in the Vowel Systems of Early Mercian Old English' (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1975)
• 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
• Toon, T. E., 'The Socio-Politics of Literacy in Early England: What we Learned at our hlaford's Knee', Folia Linguistica Historica 6 (1985), 87-106
• 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
• Dresher, B. E., 'On the Unity of the Mercian Second Fronting', Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics: Cambridge, 6-9 April 1987, ed. S. Adamson, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 65 (Amsterdam, 1990), 141-64
• 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
• Page, Raymond I.. “A note on the transliteration of Old English runic inscriptions.” Runes and Runic Inscriptions: Collected Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Viking Runes. Eds. Page, R.I. and Parsons, David. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 1995. 87-93.
• Kleinman, S., ‘Iron-clad Evidence in Early Mediaeval Dialectology’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 98 (1997), 371-90
• 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 22 (2001), 67-102
• Frank, R., ‘An Aspirin for Beowulf: Against Aches and Pains – ece and wærc’, American Notes and Queries 15 (2002), 58-63
• 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
• Fulk, R. D., ‘Old English weorc: Where Does it Hurt? South of the Thames’, American Notes and Queries 17 (2004), 6-12
• Waxenberger, G., 'The Representation of Vowels in Unstressed Syllables in the Old English Runic Corpus', Das fuþark und seine einzelsprachlichen Weiterentwicklungen: Akten der Tagung in Eichstätt vom 20. bis 24. Juli 2003, ed. A. Bammesberger and G. Waxenberger, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 51 (Berlin, 2006), pp. 272-314
• 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
• Fulk, R. D., R. E. Bjork and J. D. Niles, ed., Klaeber's Beowulf, (Toronto, 2008), pp. clvii-clviii
• Smith, J., 'The Spellings <e>, <ea> and <a> in two Wooing Group texts (MSS London, Cotton Nero A.xiv and London, Lambeth Palace 487)', The Milieu and Context of the Wooing Group, ed. S. M. Chewning (Cardiff, 2009), pp. 84-95
• 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
• Laing, M. and R. Lass, 'Raiders of the Lost Archetype: eo in the strong verbs of classes IV and V', Transactions of the Philological Society 108 (2010), 145-63
• Kotake, T., 'Farman's Changing Syntax: A Linguistic and Palaeographical Survey', Aspects of the History of the English Language and Literature, ed. O. Imahayashi, Y. Nakao and M. Ogura (Frankfurt, 2010), pp. 239-56
• 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]
• Kotake, T., 'Lindisfarne and Rushworth One Reconsidered', Notes and Queries 257 (2012), 14-19
• 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

• Wallis, C., ‘The Old English Bede: Transmission and Textual History in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’ (PhD, University of Sheffield, 2013)

• Shaw, P. A., 'Adapting the Roman Alphabet for Writing Old English: Evidence from Coin Epigraphy and Single‐Sheet Charters', Early Medieval Europe 21 (2013), 115-39
• 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
• Neidorf, L. and R. J. Pascual, 'The Language of Beowulf and the Conditioning of Kaluza’s Law', Neophilologus 98 (2014), 657-73
• Ringe, D. and A. Taylor, The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English 2 (Oxford, 2014) [passim]
• Miller, K. L., 'The Semantic Field of Slavery in Old English: Wealh, Esne, Þræl' (PhD diss., University of Leeds, 2014)
• 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

• Goering, N., ‘Old Mercian: From Beowulf to Tolkien’s Rohan’, Tolkien among Scholars, ed. N. Kuijpers and others (Beverwijk, 2016), pp. 105-17

• 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]
• Wallis, C., ‘Linguistic Repertoires and Intra-Writer Variation in Old English: Hemming of Worcester’ Intra-Writer Variation in Historical Linguistics, ed. M. Schiegg and J. Huber (Bern, 2023), pp. 451-72

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