Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the authors, who were enthusiastic from the start, wrote excellent chapters and met their deadlines diligently. The anonymous reviewers, in both the peer review organised by the editors and that by John Benjamins, gave invaluable feedback and were prompt in doing so. Taru Lilja was a great help with copy-editing the chapters. Marijke van der Wal, co-editor of the AHS series, enabled us to turn the book from proposal into publication in a timely fashion, going above and beyond the call of duty with her efforts, as did Anke de Looper at Benjamins. The editing of this volume was supported by the Academy of Finland (Reassessing Language Change: The Challenge of Real Time, project number 276349, Multilingual Practices in the History of Written English, project number 258434, and Democratization, Mediatization and Language Practices in Britain, 1700–1950, project number 295381). Finally, our warmest thanks are due to Terttu Nevalainen, whose ongoing contributions to historical sociolinguistics provided the inspiration for this volume.