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History of English grammars

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Sixteenth to eighteenth centuries

The first English grammar, Pamphlet for Grammar by William Bullokar, written with the seeming goal of demonstrating that English was quite as rule-bound as Latin, was published in 1586. Bullokar's grammar was faithfully modelled on William Lily's Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices (1534). Lily's grammar was being used in schools in England at the time, having been "prescribed" for them in 1542 by Henry VIII. Although Bullokar wrote his grammar in English and used a "reformed spelling system" of his own invention, many English grammars, for much of the century after Bullokar's effort, were to be written in Latin; this was especially the case for books whose authors were aiming to be scholarly. Christopher Cooper's Grammatica Linguæ Anglicanæ (1685) was the last English grammar written in Latin.

Latin grammar traditions bore down oppressively on early English grammar writing. Any attempt by one author to assert an independent grammatical rule for English was quickly followed by declarations by others of the truth of the corresponding Latin-based equivalent. As late as the early nineteenth century, Lindley Murray, the author of a widely used grammar, was having to cite "grammatical authorities" to bolster the claim that grammatical cases in English are different from the ones in Ancient Greek or Latin.

The focus on tradition belied the role that other social forces had begun to play in the early seventeenth century. Increasing commerce, and the social changes in its wake, created a new impetus for grammar writing. The greater British role in international trade in the second half of the century created a demand for English grammars among speakers of other languages. Quite a few English grammars were published in European languages.

In Britain, as education and literacy spread in the early eighteenth century, many grammars, such as the several editions of John Brightland's Grammar of the English Tongue and James Greenwood's Essay towards a Practical English Grammar, were written for "non-learned, native-speaker audiences" who did not know the rudiments of Latin. These audiences included women (the "fair sex"), apprentices, merchants, tradesmen, and children.

If by the end of the seventeenth century, English grammar writing had made a modest start, totaling 16 grammars from the time of Bullokar's Pamphlet, by the end of the eighteenth century, a brisk pace had been set with some 270 titles added, though it was less than half that number if later editions were not included; a large proportion were published late in the century, Both publishing and demand were to continue to mushroom. The first half of the nineteenth century would see the appearance of almost 900 new English grammar books. Showing little originality, most took the tack of claiming—as justification for their appearance—that the needs of their particular target audience were still unmet or that a particular "grammatical point" had not been adequately treated in the preexisting texts, or oftentimes both. Texts that aimed to be utilitarian and egalitarian were proliferating. Edward Shelley's The People's Grammar; or English Grammar Without Difficulties for 'the Million' (1848), for example, was written for "the mechanic and hard-working youth, in their solitary struggles for the acquirement of knowledge." William Cobbett's popular mid-century book was titled A Grammar of the English Language, in a Series of Letters: Intended for the Use of Schools and of Young Persons in General, but more especially for the use of Soldiers, Sailors, Apprentices, and Plough-Boys. Ann Fisher published an English grammar in 1745 and some 30 editions after that, making it one of the most popular early English grammars and the first written by a woman.

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