I suspect that a number of the readers of this blog will have already come across John Russell Smith’s A Bibliographical List of the works that have been published, towards illustrating the provincial dialects of England (1839) but I’ve included to a link to a pdf version of it nonetheless. This publication lists the verse collections, prose tracts and dialogues, glossaries and essays published before 1839 that feature specimens of various English dialects. The first part of the bibliography covers works on English dialects in general, while the second lists regionally-specific publications. The latter are arranged according to county and include information about different editions of the same texts. As might be expected, the majority of the entries are for works published from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, although a few earlier texts are also listed – the earliest being an MS ‘written as early as 1340 by one of the Monks of St Augustine’s Canterbury’, which features examples of the Kent dialect of the period (11).
Here is the link – I hope you find it helpful:
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I've heard this mentioned in passing before now, but have never looked at it properly before. It's a terrific resource, and it demonstrates what an high level of interest there was in dialect at the time. It is amazing that is available on Google books (I love Google books, but do get frustrated by their tendency to just scan one random volume out of a three-volume novel). Many thanks for posting this, Alex.
ReplyDeleteJohn Russell Smith published William Barnes's poems - it's quite possible that Barnes wouldn't have got published so readily if it hadn't been for Smith's interest in dialect - but I haven't gone into this, and as far as know neither has anyone else - as yet.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for the link!