Mugglestone, Lynda

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Mugglestone, Lynda

(Lynda C. Mugglestone)

PERSONAL: Female.

ADDRESSES: Office—Pembroke College, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 1DW, England. E-mail—[email protected]

CAREER: Educator and writer. Pembroke College, Oxford, Oxford, England, dean and fellow in English language. Contributor to British Broadcasting Corporation Radio; lecturer.

MEMBER: Dictionary Society of North America, English Dictionary Forum.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical, Penguin (New York, NY), 1995.

Talking Proper: The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(Editor) Lexicography and the OED: Pioneers in the Untrodden Forest, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Lost for Words: The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2005.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A book on World War I dealing with the cultural interface of language, lexicography, and social change.

SIDELIGHTS: Lynda Mugglestone has worked as an educator for a number of years; she has served as a dean of Pembroke College, Oxford, as well as a fellow in English language and literature at that same university. Her teaching specialties include the standardization and history of English, dialect in literature, and the language used by specific authors, including Geoffrey Chaucer and Charles Dickens. Her research interests follow a similar vein, and include the history of the English language in the nineteenth century and the cultural, social, and linguistic history of dictionaries. Mugglestone is a frequent lecturer at universities around England, and a regular contributor to British Broadcasting Corporation radio programming.

In 1995, Mugglestone published Talking Proper: The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol. Drawing from eighteenth-and nineteenth-century source materials regarding British society, the author analyzes the change in attitude toward speech accents, and how that change coincided with the standardization of written and spoken English. Mugglestone illustrates how accent, once a neutral ornament to speech, became increasingly symbolic of one's social class and status; she also documents reactions and challenges to this change in thought toward accent.

Overall, Talking Proper was greeted positively by reviewers and readers. Many found the work to be a thorough history of a topic that still influences British society today. "This book … dramatically and appropriately illustrates what amounts to a 'national obsession,'… a preoccupation of countless pundits from the eighteenth century onwards," wrote Katie Wales in the Review of English Studies. Other reviewers enjoyed the author's insightful interpretations and fresh take on a popular subject. "While many literary texts reinforce prevailing linguistic stereotypes, Mugglestone's readings of writers like [T.S.] Eliot and [Charles] Dickens underline how those authors subtly subvert sociolinguistic stereotypes by dissociating manners from morals," observed Notes and Queries contributor Carol Percy.

Mugglestone's next major work was 2005's Lost for Words: The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary. With this book the author documents the making of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED); Mugglestone used newly discovered documents from Bodleian Library's Murray Papers and the OED archives to provide new insight into the tome's creation. The author also shows the distinct difference between editor James A.H. Murray's original, idealized concept for the OED and the reference work that was finally published in 1928.

Again, reviewers has much to praise in Lost for Words. Many lauded Mugglestone's tireless research and thorough documentation of the dictionary's history. "Through archival evidence Mugglestone illuminates the thousands of decisions regarding inclusion/exclusion, labeling, etymology, definitions, social and political biases, and limitations of money, space, and nine that went into making the OED," wrote Paul D'Alessandro in a review for the Library Journal. Others appreciated Mugglestone's keen interest in her subject, one that shines through in her writing and style. "She writes with obvious admiration for the aging clan of editors who struggled at what was gener-ally acknowledged to be a Sisyphean task," observed American Scholar contributor Caroline Preston.