TAYLOR, Walt. Doughty's English. Oxford University Press 1939.
8vo. Original printed wrappers; pp. 46; fraying to wrappers, interior well preserved.
Tract No. 51 from the Society for Pure English, Doughty's English is a testament to the well known writer of Travels in Arabia Deserta. Taylor, however, focuses his essay on the impact of Doughty's writings on the evolution of English as we know it today. He posits that it was Doughty, in his revolution against Victorian English, who overturned what had become a stubborn cultural aversion to the mutability of language. The salient point of the work is to both honour Doughty's resolve in successfully introducing a new form of English into an unwelcoming market and to analyse how Arabic and English can benefit from each other in a modern (contemporarily speaking) context. Perhaps the most fascinating element of this study, however, is the linguistic focus that dominates the final section - Taylor lists a series of grammatical constructs, and explains the ways in which Doughty reshaped them, allowing us to witness the evolution of language in motion, some of which are easily recognizable in our language today and without which we would be sorely disadvantaged.
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