John Ash and the Rise of the Children’s Grammar Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6006 Trans 10 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://www.lotschool.nl Cover illustration: “The Articles”. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, The Infant’s Grammar Page 3. ISBN: 978-94-6093-061-4 NUR 616 Copyright © 2011: Karlijn Navest. All rights reserved. John Ash and the Rise of the Children’s Grammar Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof. mr. P.F. van der Heijden, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op dinsdag 20 september 2011 klokke 16.15 uur door Karlijn Marianne Navest geboren te Bergen op Zoom in 1980 Promotiecommissie promotor Prof. dr. I.M. Tieken-Boon van Ostade overige leden Prof. dr. P.G. Hoftijzer Prof. dr. I. Sluiter Dr. D. Stoker (University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK) The research for this book was carried out as part of the project “The Codifiers and the English Language: Tracing the Norms of Standard English”, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). For my parents Table of Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... v Chapter 1. Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 1.1. The teaching of English grammar ................................................................................ 1 1.2. The concept of unacknowledged copying ................................................................ 8 1.3. John Ash and his grammar ........................................................................................... 10 1.4. Aims........................................................................................................................................ 12 1.5. Outline of the thesis ......................................................................................................... 14 Chapter 2. John Ash, his life and his grammar .................................................... 19 2.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 19 2.2. John Ash’s life ..................................................................................................................... 20 2.3. Publication history of the grammar ......................................................................... 24 2.3.1. The first five editions of Ash’s grammar ............................................... 24 2.3.2. Ryland’s editions of Ash’s grammar ........................................................ 26 2.3.3. British editions and reprints of Ash’s grammar ................................. 36 2.4. The reception of Ash’s grammar ................................................................................ 45 2.5. Conclusion............................................................................................................................ 60 Chapter 3. Ash’s grammar: its sources, structure and approach ................. 63 3.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 63 3.2. Ash’s use of sources ......................................................................................................... 66 3.3. The structure of Ash’s grammar ................................................................................ 80 3.4. John Ash: prescriptive or descriptive grammarian? ......................................... 86 3.5. The fourth edition of Ash’s grammar ....................................................................... 93 3.6. Conclusion............................................................................................................................ 98 Chapter 4. Ash’s influence across the Atlantic .................................................. 101 4.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 101 4.2. The publication of Ash’s grammar in North America ..................................... 103 ii 4.3. A tale of two grammars: Ash’s Grammatical Institutes and Webster’s Grammatical Institute of the English Language ........................... 109 4.4. The popularity of Murray’s grammar .................................................................... 118 4.5. Murray’s dependence on Ash .................................................................................... 121 4.6. Conclusion.......................................................................................................................... 128 Chapter 5. Female users of Ash’s grammar ........................................................ 131 5.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 131 5.2. Ash’s Grammatical Institutes and the Young Ladies’ Boarding School .................................................................................................................................. 133 5.3. Ash’s grammar studied by women ......................................................................... 138 5.4. Ash’s Grammatical Institutes and the teacher-grammarians ...................... 144 5.5. Conclusion.......................................................................................................................... 151 Chapter 6. “Borrowing a few passages”: Lady Ellenor Fenn’s dependence on Ash’s Grammatical Institutes ....................................................... 153 6.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 153 6.2. Lady Ellenor Fenn: life and works .......................................................................... 155 6.3. Fenn’s little treatises on grammar .......................................................................... 167 6.4. Ash’s grammar as a source of inspiration for Fenn ......................................... 182 6.5. Differences between the grammars by Ash and Fenn .................................... 189 6.6. Conclusion.......................................................................................................................... 200 Chapter 7. Fenn and nineteenth-century female grammarians ................. 203 7.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 203 7.2. Fenwick’s Rays from the Rainbow ........................................................................... 204 7.3. Ballantine’s Decoy ........................................................................................................... 207 7.4. Marcet’s Mary’s Grammar ........................................................................................... 210 7.5. Corner’s Play Grammar ................................................................................................ 216 7.6. More nineteenth-century grammars for children ............................................ 219 7.7. Conclusion.......................................................................................................................... 225 Chapter 8. Conclusion ................................................................................................. 227 Table of Contents iii Appendix 1 ...................................................................................................................... 235 Appendix 2 ...................................................................................................................... 251 References ...................................................................................................................... 255 Primary sources ....................................................................................................................... 255 Secondary sources .................................................................................................................. 269 Samenvatting ................................................................................................................. 293 Curriculum Vitae .......................................................................................................... 301 Acknowledgements My interest in Georgian Britain started at the age of sixteen, while I was watching Andrew Davies’s television adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1995). However, it was not until February 2002, more than five years later, that I was properly introduced to the era while attending Professor Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade’s inspiring MA course about eighteenth-century letter writers entitled “Of Norms and Networks”. Intrigued by the period, I also decided to take her course “Grammars and Grammarians in the Eighteenth Century” in the autumn of 2002. My final paper for this course dealt with the female grammarian Lady Ellenor Fenn (1744–1813), whose grammatical works were specifically aimed at a young audience, and who, as I will also show below, developed interesting pedagogical ideas in teaching children the rudiments of English grammar. In September 2005 I joined Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade’s VICI-project “The Codifiers and the English Language: Tracing the Norms of Standard English”, funded by NWO, the