Elizabeth Elstob, the first woman scholar of Anglo-Saxon, wrote this preface to her grammar of the English-Saxon tongue to defend the study of Old English against fashionable contempt. She answers critics including Swift, praises her mentor George Hickes, and argues that the oldest English is a source of strength for the modern language.
A spirited early landmark of English philology and of women’s learning, with Charles Peake’s introduction. Download the free EPUB.