Words, Names and History: Selected Writings of Cecily Clark

Cecily Clark (1926-1992), known for her work as editor of the Peterborough Chronicle and for her extensive researches in Medieval English onomastics, lectured at the Universities of London, Edinburgh and Aberdeen before settling in Cambridge as a Research Fellow. This volume contains a series of Cecily Clark's masterly and innovative essays on personal-naming patterns in post-Conquest England, ranging from case-studies of towns in which contact between settler and native was especially close (Canterbury, Battle, King's Lynn) to a series of fundamental discussions of the linguistic situation in late eleventh- and twelfth-century England as a whole. Other items reprinted include articles on the principles and methodology of onomastic research; a small but important group of studies of the Liber Vitae of Thorney Abbey; and four essays that use linguistic tools to illuminate unexpected aspects of such apparently-familiar texts as The Battle of Maldon and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Essential reading for all those interested in post-Conquest history and linguistics.