The book is a plea for paying more attention in linguistics curricula to historical orthography, and I couldn’t agree more. The book is well written, and in my view very accessible. Focusing on spelling systems worldwide, it also deals with the history of English spelling. But because, by his own admission, Marco Condorelli’s expertise largely lies with Early Modern English, developments in the history of English spelling from the Late Modern English period are not dealt with. This is unfortunate, because there is a lot more to days on the subject. And because much of my work over the past four decades or so deals with spelling in that period, it seemed useful to add an overview by way of an appendix of the book, for anyone interested in seeing what went on after the printers had more or less arrived at a fixed English spelling system around the year 1700.

My own interest in English spelling was inspired by the work of Noel Osselton, which was groundbreaking at the time, but still is:

Osselton, N.E. 1963. Formal and informal spelling in the 18^th century: Errour, honor, and related words. English Studies, 44, 267–75.

Osselton, N.E. 1984. Informal spelling systems in Early Modern English: 1500-1800. In N.F. Blake and Charles Jones (eds.), English Historical Linguistics: Studies in Development. Sheffield: CECTAL. 123 – 137. Repr. in Mats Rydén, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, and Merja Kytö (eds.) (1998), A Reader in Early Modern English, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 33-45.

Osselton, N.E. 1985. Spelling-book rules and the capitalizatin of nouns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Mary-Jo Arn and Hanneke Wirtjes, with Hans Jansen (eds.), Historical and Editorial Studies in Medieval and Early Modern English. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff. 49–61. Repr. in Mats Rydén, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, and Merja Kytö (eds.) (1998), A Reader in Early Modern English, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 447–460.

In my own work, I have focused on the language of individual authors, very much inspired by these articles, but there is a general chapter on spelling in my Introduction to Late Modern English:

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2009. An Introduction to Late Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Chapter 3, Spelling systems, 37–52.

My publications of the spelling (including capitalisation) of individual authors from the Late Modern English period include the folllowing:

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 1996. Social network theory and eighteenth-century English: The case of Boswell. In: Britton Derek (ed.), English Historical Linguistics 1994. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. 327–337(p. 334 only).

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 1998. Standardisation of English spelling: the eighteenth-century printers’ contribution. In: Fisiak J. & Krygier M. (eds.), English historical linguistics 1996. Berlijn: Mouton de Gruyter. 457–470.

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2000. Social network analysis and the language of Sarah Fielding, European Journal of English Studies 4/3: 291–301.

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid and Randy Bax. 2002. Of Dodsley’s projects and linguistic influence: The language of Johnson and Lowth. Historical sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical linguistics, 2.

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2006. ‘Disrespectful and too familiar’? Abbreviations as an index of politeness in 18th-century letters. Dalton-Puffer C., Ritt N., Schendl H. & Kastovsky D. (eds.), Syntax, Style and Grammatical Norms: English from 1500–2000. . Frankfurt/Bern: Peter Lang. 229–247.

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2011. The Bishop’s Grammar. Robert Lowth and the Rise of Prescriptivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press (ee Index).

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2014. In Search of Jane Austen. The Language of the Letters. Oxford, New York etc.: Oxford University Press. Chapter 5.

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2015. Belle de Zuylen’s English, Cahiers Isabelle de Charrière = Belle de Zuylen Papers 10, 8–31 (p.16).

There are various other publications on Late Modern English spelling: Manfred Görlach deals with the topic in his books on the period.

Görlach, Manfred. (1999). English in Nineteenth-Century England. An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Görlach, Manfred. (2001). Eighteenth-Century English, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter.

As do various other writers, such as:

Fens-de Zeeuw, Lyda. 2011. Lindley Murray (1745 – 1826), Quaker and Grammarian. Utrecht: LOT (various places in the book).

Fens-de Zeeuw, Lyda and Robin Straaijer (2012). Long-s in Late Modern English Manuscripts. English Language and Linguistics 16/2, 319-338.

Henstra, Froukje. 2014. Horace Walpole and his Correspondents: Social Network Analysis in a Historical Context. Utrecht: LOT (various places in the book).

More publications could be added – and if you know of them, please let me know. This overview should at least give some idea of the considerable attention paid over the years to English spelling during the Late Modern period.