Anita Auer is Full Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Lausanne. Daniel Schreier is Full Professor of English Linguistics at Universität Zürich. Richard J. Watts is a former Full Professor of English Linguistics at Universität Bern, Switzerland, now retired.

• 1. Setting the scene, letters, standards and historical sociolinguistics Richard J. Watts; 2. Assessing variability and change in early English letters Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy and Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre; 3. Private letters as a source for an alternative history of Middle New High German Stephan Elspaß; 4. Language in print and handwriting Tony Fairman; 5. Heterogeneity vs homogeneity Marianne Hundt; 6. Emerging standards in the colonies, variation and the Canadian letter writer Stefan Dollinger; 7. Linguistic fingerprints of authors and scribes Alexander Bergs; 8. Stylistic variation Anita Auer; 9. English aristocratic letters Susan Fitzmaurice; 10. Early nineteenth-century pauper letters Mikko Laitinen; 11. A non-standard standard? Exploring the evidence from nineteenth-century vernacular letters and diaries Barbara Allen; 12. Archaism and dialect in Irish emigrant letters Lukas Pietsch; 13. Assessing heterogeneity Lucia Siebers; 14. Hypercorrection and the persistence of local dialect features in writing Daniel Schreier; 15. Epilogue: where next? Anita Auer, Daniel Schreier and Richard J. Watts; References; Index.

'Letter Writing and Language Change highlights the rich variety of approaches that letters can offer for the study of language variation and change across time, space and the linguistic spectrum.' Terttu Nevalainen, University of Helsinki