Middle English Word Studies: A Word and Author Index. (Shorter Notices).

Edwards, A.S.G.

Louise Sylvester and Jane Roberts, Middle English Word Studies: A Word and Author Index (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000). 322 pp. ISBN 0-85991-606-5. 35.00 [pounds sterling]. The title of this volume promises far more than is actually delivered. It claims to cover only material published since 1950, and only journal articles (though in fact it allows some exceptions to both restrictions, without explanation). But even within these limits coverage seems bizarrely unsystematic; entries have been included by `working from the Year's Work in English Studies selecting likely-looking articles; and reading every article and all reviews in every volume of a chosen journal for one decade' (p. 2; my emphasis added). The result is bewilderingly unsystematic, both in the randomness of inclusion and the frequent pointlessness of what does get in. Thus reviews of books which have been excluded appear but with no annotation to explain why they have been included. Where articles have been superseded by later books only the former appear. There is no definition of what constitutes a `word study'. That such a volume should have been assisted by funding from HEFCE and the British Academy is a ground for serious reflection.