Kenneth Jackson's Language and History in Early Britain (Edinburgh, 1953) is an essential reference book for the early history of Britain.

In his foreword to the 1994 edition (reprinted 2000), Professor William Gilles, University of Edinburgh, says:

"Kenneth Jackson's work set up the ground rules under which we operate, and remains the starting point for discussion. That, in addition to its stylistic and intellectual strengths (and for its timeless qualities of exposition and definition), is why Language and History in Early Britain continues to be read and cited..."

The history of British language and its descendants - Welsh, Cornish and Breton - before the Norman Conquest is very not well known and still a subject for research, discussion and debate. Based on all available evidence during the writing of his book, Jackson attempts to trace their development from the first to the twelfth centuries and analyse the chronology of their sound changes.

Part I looks at the sources, such as Romano-British and post-Roman inscriptions, names in Classical authors, early Welsh, Cornish and Breton documents, the Latin loanwords in British and Irish, and British place-names in English, which can only be adequately understood when examined in such a chronological scheme.

Part II sets out in detail the probable dates of the linguistic developments concerned.

BIO: Kenneth Jackson was one of the foremost Celtic scholars of his generation. He was born in Croyden in 1909. He took Open Scholarship in Classics to St John's College, Cambridge where he studied under Nora Chadwick. Becoming fluent in six Celtic languages, he was appointed Professor of Celtic at Harvard in 1939, before moving to Edinburgh University where he took the Chair of Celtic Literature in 1949. He served on the Royal Commission for the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, and was a member of the British Academy and honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. He died in February 1991.

WORKS: Studies in early Celtic nature poetry (Cambridge, 1935); Cath Maighe Léna (Dublin, 1938; rep. 1990); A Celtic miscellany (London, 1951; 1971); Celt and Saxon: studies in the early British border (Cambridge, 1963); The oldest Irish tradition: a window on the Iron Age (Cambridge UP, 1964).