How did authors such as Jonson, Spenser, Donne and Milton think about the past lives of the words they used? Hannah Crawforth shows how early modern writers were acutely attuned to the religious and political implications of the etymology of English words. She argues that these lexically astute writers actively engaged with the lexicographers, Anglo-Saxonists and etymologists who were carrying out a national project to recover, or invent, the origins of English, at a time when the question of a national vernacular was inseparable from that of national identity. English words are deployed to particular effect – as a polemical weapon, allegorical device, coded form of communication, type of historical allusion or political tool. Drawing together early modern literature and linguistics, Crawforth argues that the history of English as it was studied in the period radically underpins the writing of its greatest poets.

'… what [Crawforth] delivers most of all is an intriguing, compelling, wonderfully considered account of the linguistic worlds of early modern writers, with their special awareness of the soft and hard landings words have in the world.'

Raphael Lyne Source: The Cambridge Quarterly

'… in addition to opening several fruitful avenues for future scholarly work, Crawforth has done readers one other service. By focusing on authors’ systematic use of etymology, she shows us that Renaissance poets imagined the study of word origins, a philological and humanistic study, as, more than anything, a practical approach to the world.'

Ryan Netzley Source: Milton Quarterly