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
• Campbell, A., Review of R. Vleeskruyer, ed. The Life of St. Chad, Medium Ævum 24 (1955), 52-6
• 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)
• Ball, C. J. E., 'The Language of the Vespasian Psalter Gloss', Review of English Studies 21 (1970), 462-5
• 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
• Grant, R. J. S, The B Text of the Old English Bede: A Linguistic Commentary, Costerus ns 73 (Amsterdam, 1989)
• 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
• Hogg, R. M., A Grammar of Old English, vol. 1 Phonology (Oxford, 1992), pp. 5-7
• 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
• Hogg, R. M., ‘On the Ideological Boundaries of Old English Dialects’, Advances in English Historical Linguistics, ed. J. Fisiak and M. Krygier, Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 112 (Berlin, 1998), pp. 107-18
• 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
• Hogg, R. M. and R. D. Fulk, A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2 Morphology (Maldon, 2011)
• 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
• 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
• Sauer, H. and G. Waxenberger, 'Old English: Dialects', English Historical Linguistics: An International Handbook, ed. A. Bergs and L. J. Brinton (Berlin, 2012), pp. 340-61
• 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

• Cichosz, A., 'Verb-Initial Main Clauses in Bede: A Translation Effect', Current Developments in English Historical Linguistics: Studies in Honour of Rafał Molencki, ed. A. Kijak, A. Łęcki and J. Nykiel (Katowice, 2017), pp. 68-89
• 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]
• 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
• Kotake, T., ed., Rushworth One: An Edition of Farman's Old English Interlinear Gloss to the Rushworth Gospels, Medium Ævum Monographs 44 (Oxford, 2023)
• Stenroos, M., 'Nu is þeo Leore For-Leten: Conventionality, Complexity and Substitution Sets in Historical English Spelling', SELIM 29 (2024), 109-25
• Den Hertog, S., 'Subgrouping the Old English Dialects Using Historical Glottometry', Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älterent Germanistik 84 (2024), 470-95
• Seiler, A., 'Mæw or Meg ('Seagull')? Mercian Dialect Features in an Early Old English Glossary from the Continent', Cultural Connections between the Continent and Early Medieval England, ed. T. Porck, K. Dekker and L. S. Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Studies 53 (Cambridge, 2025), pp. 227-50

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