Author Archives: Ingrid Tieken

Learning to read an 18th-century hand

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Ingrid Tieken

Eighteenth-century handwriting may seem hard to read at first sight, yet you do get used to it once you get going. And in the course of reading a person’s handwritten texts, you develop a feel for the writer’s particular characteristics. … Continue reading →

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Ever yours?

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Ingrid Tieken

The first letter by Jane Austen that has come down to us, addressed to her sister Cassandra, ends as follows: I condole with Miss M. on her losses and with Eliza on her gains, and am ever yours,/J. A. (letter 1, … Continue reading →

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Sara Hutchinson’s lifedates?

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Ingrid Tieken

Could anyone help me find Sara Hutchinson’s lifedates? Sara was the sister of William Wordsorth’s wife Mary (1770-1859). An edition of her letters was published in 1954, by K. Coburn, but we don’t have the book in the library here. The … Continue reading →

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Queen Wilhelmina’s English

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

Earlier this week, NRC Handelsblad, one of the Dutch quality newspapers, published a review of a book called Dear Old Bones. Brieven van Koningin Wilhelmina aan haar Engelse gouvernante Miss Elizabeth Saxton Winter 1886-1935, edited by Emerentia van Heuven-van Nes. Fantastic, … Continue reading →

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Alzheimer’s in LModE letter writers?

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

On his website, Ian Lancashire, from the University of Toronto, reports on research done on the language of Agatha Christie and Iris Murdoch, and by way of a control informant, on that of P.D. James.  He wrote a paper on … Continue reading →

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Letter Writing in Late Modern Europe

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

Earlier this year, a collection of articles on letter writing in a wider context than Late Modern English was published: Letter Writing in Late Modern Europe, edited by Marina Dossena and Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti (Benjamins 2012). From its table of … Continue reading →

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Finding new norms of usage

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

William Clift (1775-1849) has been mentioned several times on this blog already. One of the reasons his language is interesting is that by studying the letters you can see how he substitutes one linguistic model, that of his sister Elizabeth … Continue reading →

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Self-corrections and prepositions

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

This week, we are reading Anita Auer’s article on self-corrections in Late Modern English letters (Auer 2008). In this article, Auer discusses three case studies, and one of them concerns the letters of Lucy Whitaker (1759-1837), the wife of a … Continue reading →

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Lowth letters in Leiden

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

Great news: Leiden University Library owns two letters from the most authoritative 18th-century English grammarian, Robert Lowth (1710-1787). They were identified accidentally by Myrte Wouterse, BA English and Honours Academy student at the University of Leiden. Myrte and a fellow student had been taken … Continue reading →

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Fanny Burney in King’s Lynn

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

King’s Lynn is a small town on the coast of Norfolk in England, about 45 miles North of Cambridge. It used to be one of the four major English harbours, and it has a Hanseatic connection as well as several … Continue reading →

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