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Title: Bright's Old English Grammar and Reader by F. J. Cassidy, R. Ringler ISBN: 0-03-084713-3 Publisher: International Thomson Publishing Pub. Date: 01 June, 1972 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $51.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: Ok, but not the best
Comment: I first learned OE from Bright's over 20 yrs ago now.

Compared to the texts I used for learned classical languages, it definately left something to be desired in its method of grammar presentation. He should have spelled out the paradigms more explicitly than using a tilde so much, and combining Nom/Acc cases all the time. I learned Latin/Greek/Hebrew by rote memorization as most Classicists do. Give me the full chart so I can see/say the inflections !

I highly recommend instead Mitchell and Robinson "A Guide to Old English". This is the book I recently relearned OE from after all of these years. Finally, I have an execellent understanding of Old English that I never had using Bright's.

Rating: 5
Summary: Return of an Old Friend
Comment: To Old English scholars, Bright's 'Old English Grammar and Reader' is the one. Other, more up-to-date Old English grammars glut the market. Most of them are very adequate and very dull. Bright reminds us of the 'happy days', when 'our false love was true'. In short, it recapitulates the complicated excitement of our first learning of Anglo-Saxon and coming to love that incredible island-world before the ruthless William set about robbing us of more than half of our native vocabulary and giving us in its place a plethora of euphamisms and plug-ins to a more complicated culture than the French. douglas mitchell

Rating: 5
Summary: Very good: readable although somewhat heavy
Comment: Bright's is a very good book for an amateur or more experienced linguist wishing to learn Old English. It begins with explanations of the basic component parts of language such as phonetics, which are not often taught as a part of other (particularly modern) language curricula. These rudiments, however, are none too basic, and each page is chock-full of information. The grammar section lasts perhaps 110 pages; then a well-annotated reader follows. Bright's is a useful and readable grammar book but somewhat heavy and I would recommend it only to language enthusiasts -- but after all, who else would want to study Old English?