There is no lack of introductions to the grammar of Old English. Still one of the best, if you have the background in traditional Latin-based grammar to use it, is Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Primer, first published in 1882. The trouble is that few students now do have that background, and there has been little attempt among writers of Old English grammars to address the needs of people without it.

Of Sweet’s would be replacements, undoubtedly the best is Quirk and Wrenn’s Old English Grammar, which does try to reassess the way the information is to be presented and introduces some more modern ideas. Where it is unsatisfactory, in my opinion, is in making too much of the similarities between Old English and Modern English and too little of the very great differences between them.

In this present attempt at an introduction to Old English grammar, I have tried to address a reader who brings no prior knowledge of languages to the study of Old English, and to present Old English to that reader in the terms in which it speaks to me, with all its quiddity and strangeness. If this helps anyone to read and enjoy an Old English text, I will be very satisfied; if not, there are many other books for them to go to.

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