Cockney Past and Present

<p>Although Cockney can be considered to be one of the most important non-standard forms of English there had been little to no scholarly attention on the dialect prior to William Matthews's 1938 volume <i>Cockney Past and Present</i>. Matthews traced the course of the speech of London from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century by gathering information from many sources including plays novels music-hall songs the comments of critics and the speech and recollections of living Cockneys. This book will be of interest to students of language and linguistics. </p>