Scholars and arm-chair historians of eighteenth-century America will take great pleasure in reading this exceptionally well-researched slice of colonial history. In The Baylors of Newmarket, author Thomas Katheder has meticulously researched one of the wealthiest and most socially prominent yet least known families in colonial Virginia. Drawing on mostly unpublished sources, including British and French archives and Virginia court documents, The Baylors of Newmarket is the fascinating and tragic story of Col. John Baylor III and his son John IV, including Col. Baylor's relentless pursuit of equine perfection and his son's delusional quest for the perfect Virginia mansion. The Baylors of Newmarket places the family in the larger context of a pre-Revolutionary Anglo-Virginian elite that sought to emulate the British gentry in culture, education, books and reading, dress, furnishings, and behavior. After the Revolution, the Baylors struggled to maintain what was becoming an increasingly outmoded lifestyle. This extensively referenced history also describes in rich detail the library begun by Col. Baylor III and expanded by his son John IV within the context of a strong book culture among the pre-Revolutionary Virginia gentry that has been largely underappreciated by scholars.

The book offers insight into the publication history of eighteenth-century English grammars in unprecedented detail. It is based on a close analysis of various types of relevant information: Alston's bibliography of 1965, showing that this source needs to be revised urgently; the recently published online database Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) with respect to sources of information never previously explored or analysed (such as book catalogues and library catalogues); Carol Percy's database on the reception of eighteenth-century grammars in contemporary periodical reviews; and so-called precept corpora containing data on the treatment in a large variety of grammars (and other works) of individual grammatical constructions. By focussing on individual grammars and their history a number of long-standing questions are solved with respect to the authorship of particular grammars and related work (the Brightland/Gildon grammar and the Bellum Grammaticale; Ann Fisher's grammar) while new questions are identified, such as the significant change of approach between the publication of one grammar and its second edition of seven years later (Priestley), and the dependence of later practical grammars (for mothers and their children) on earlier publications. The contributions present a view of the grammarians as individuals with (or without) specific qualifications for undertaking what they did, with their own ideas on teaching methodology, and as writers ultimately engaged in the common aim presenting practical grammars of English to the general public. Interestingly - and importantly - this collection of articles demonstrates the potential of ECCO as a resource for further research in the field.

This study reclaims Pope's meaning in each successive imitation by focusing on the differences between Horace's Latin poems and Pope's English versions. It considers not only Pope's expression of concerns about his own world but also the contemporary reputation of the Roman Augustan Age and of Augustus and Horace.

This book offers the student of English Baptist history (1741-1845) access to a remarkable archive of Baptist letters found in the collections of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, of which only a handful have ever been seen before. Not only do these letters add greatly to our understanding of Baptist history during these years, but the biographical footnotes and glossary of names included in the book provide an invaluable resource tool for students who do not have the opportunity to conduct archival research. The most striking aspect of the Baptist correspondence in the Raffles Collection are the seventy-five letters addressed to John Sutcliff (1752-1814), Baptist minister at Olney (1775-1814). This book also provides identifications of more than 850 individuals, including 480 Baptist ministers, missionaries, and laypersons, of which nearly 300 can be found in the biographical glossary at the end of the volume. The remaining individuals are primarily ministers of other denominations, political figures, merchants, and writers, of which approximately ninety can be found in the glossary. No other volume in print provides students of Baptist history with such a resource for biographical information on Baptist ministers, missionaries, and laypersons from this period. The publication of this book also establishes the John Rylands University Library as one of the more significant depositories of Baptist archival materials, especially as related to the workings of the Baptist Missionary Society, within the United Kingdom.

A New Statesman Best Book of the Year A Church Times Book of the Year We are facing a crisis of civility, a war of words polluting our public sphere. In liberal democracies committed to tolerating active, often heated disagreement, the loss of this virtue appears critical. Most modern appeals to civility follow arguments by Hobbes or Locke by proposing to suppress disagreement or exclude views we deem “uncivil” for the sake of social harmony. By comparison, mere civility—a grudging conformity to norms of respectful behavior—as defended by Rhode Island’s founder, Roger Williams, might seem minimal and unappealing. Yet Teresa Bejan argues that Williams’s outlook offers a promising path forward in confronting our own crisis, one that challenges our fundamental assumptions about what a tolerant—and civil—society should look like. “Penetrating and sophisticated.” —James Ryerson, New York Times Book Review “Would that more of us might learn to look into the past with such gravity and humility. We might end up with a more (or mere) civil society, yet.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “A deeply admirable book: original, persuasive, witty, and eloquent.” —Jacob T. Levy, Review of Politics “A terrific book—learned, vigorous, and challenging.” —Alison McQueen, Stanford University

Not only academic educationalists interested in the history of the curriculum, but teachers - from primary schools to University, will find this book of compelling interest.

The Contributors to this volume offer a broad range of novel insights about data-based or data-driven approaches to the study of both structure and function of language, reflecting the increasing shift towards corpus-based methods of analysis in a wide range of areas in linguistics. Corpora can be used as models of human linguistic experience, and the contributors demonstrate that there is ample scope for integrating such models into the descriptions of discourse, grammar and meaning. Continually improving technological development facilitates the design of larger and more comprehensive corpora documenting language use in a multitude of genres, styles and modes, even starting to include visual aspects. Software to investigate these data also becomes increasingly powerful and more refined. The sixteen original articles in this volume cover substantial ground on both the theoretical as well as applied levels. Having such data and software resources at their disposal, the contributing researchers rethink the long discussed interplay between language system and use from various angles, considering socio-cultural and cognitive involvement and representation, with synchronic as well as diachronic perspectives in view. These theories and quantitative / qualitative methods are applied to a range of topics from language acquisition and teaching to literature and politics. All of the authors in this volume reveal the profound and leading impact that Mike Stubb’s work has continued to contribute to the field of corpus-based description of language structure, use and function.