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This is a work of delight and insight that has an appeal that transcends time and class. A classic work, it takes its place alongside other classics with a slightly cheeky impunity.
Review Quotes
1. "It reads as freshly today as it did fifty years ago, when it surprised everyone with its originality and daring, an intriguing blend of personal insight and solid detective-work. If ever a word-book deserved to be called a classic, it is this."
-David Crystal
"Eric was a human lexicographer, like Samuel Johnson. He was a philologist rather than a linguist. He knew what Chomsky was doing and what had happened to phonology in Prague, but he eschewed the strict scientific approach. Linguistics is scared of semantics and prefers to concentrate on structures, leaving the study of the meaning of words to anthropologists - or, perhaps with misgivings, to Johnsonian word-lovers like Eric Partridge."
-Anthony Burgess
""Shakespeare's Bawdy's status as a pioneering study remains unchallenged."
- Ralph Elliott
2. 'It reads as freshly today as it did fifty years ago, when it surprised everyone with its originality and daring, an intriguing blend of personal insight and solid detective-work. If ever a word-book deserved to be called a classic, it is this.' - David Crystal
