Introduction : a history of English / Lynda Mugglestone -- Preliminaries : before English / Terry Hoad -- Beginnings and transitions : Old English / Susan Irvine -- Contacts and conflicts : Latin, Norse, and French / Matthew Townend -- Middle English - dialects and diversity / Marilyn Corrie -- From middle to early modern English / Jeremy Smith -- Restructuring Renaissance English / April McMahon -- Mapping change in Tudor English / Terttu Nevalainen -- The babel of Renaissance English / Paula Blank -- English at the onset of the normative tradition / Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade -- English in the nineteenth century / Lynda Mugglestone -- Modern regional English in the British Isles / Clive Upton -- English among the languages / Richard W. Bailey -- English world-wide in the twentieth century / Tom McArthur -- Into the twenty-first century / David Crystal.