Seth Lerer is Distinguished Professor of Literature Emeritus at the University of California at San Diego, where he has also served as Dean of Arts and Humanities. His publications include Chaucer and His Readers (1993), Error and the Academic Self (2002), Inventing English (revised edition, 2015), Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter (2008), and Shakespeare’s Lyric Stage (2018). He has published creative non-fiction in The American Scholar, The Yale Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and in his memoir, Prospero’s Son (2013).

• List of FiguresList of TablesPrefaceEnglish Phonemes and Transcribing SpeechAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: What Is Language and How Do We Study It?Chapter 1: The Indo-European LanguagesChapter 2: The Germanic LanguagesChapter 3: The Old English PeriodChapter 4: Middle EnglishChapter 5. From Middle English to Modern EnglishChapter 6. English in the Age of Shakespeare and the King James BibleChapter 7: The Age of Regulation: British English, 1650-1800Chapter 8. The Sounds and Shapes of English in Great Britain, 1800-2000Chapter 9: American English: Origins, Varieties, and AttitudesChapter 10: The English Language and the Black AtlanticChapter 11: English in the WorldChapter 12: Twenty-First-Century EnglishIndex

"With elegance and clarity, and relying on recent developments in sociolinguistic thinking and methodology, Lerer’s Introducing the History of the English Language rights the imbalances of previous accounts by stressing English’s constant diversity. This important book is likely to become the standard textbook for the foreseeable future."Tim William Machan, University of Notre Dame, USA"Sensitive to both literature and lived experience, Seth Lerer’s Introducing the History of the English Language offers an accessible guide to English and its many voices. This is the modern, user-friendly textbook I have been waiting for." Irina Dumitrescu, University of Bonn, Germany