Merja Kytö is Professor of English Language, Uppsala University. Mats Rydén is Professor Emeritus in English, Uppsala University. Erik Smitterberg is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in English Linguistics, Stockholm University.

• List of plates; List of figures; List of tables; List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction: exploring nineteenth century English - past and present perspectives Merja Kytö, Mats Rydén and Erik Smitterberg; 1. Modifiers describing women and men in nineteenth-century English Ingegerd Bäcklund; 2. Words in English Record Office documents of the early 1800s Tony Fairman; 3. The subjunctive in adverbial clauses in nineteenth-century English Peter Grund and Terry Walker; 4. The passive in nineteenth-century scientific writing Larisa Oldireva Gustafsson; 5. Relativizers in nineteenth-century English Christine Johansson; 6. Anaphoric reference in the nineteenth century: 'that/those + of' constructions Mark Kaunisto; 7. Adjective comparison in nineteenth-century English Merja Kytö and Suzanne Romaine; 8. Nonfinite complement clauses in the nineteenth century: the case of 'remember' Christian Mair; 9. The 'in-ing' construction in British English, 1800–2000 Juhani Rudanko; 10. Partitive constructions in nineteenth-century English Erik Smitterberg; Appendix; References; Name index; Subject index.

'This volume is an important and highly welcome contribution to the investigation of nineteenth-century English and to the corpus-based diachronic study of linguistic variation in general. It goes without saying that it provides further evidence for the fact that the nineteenth century is a very attractive period in the history of English which merits the particular attention of historical linguists.' Journal of English Language and Linguistics