Neither can his mind be thought to be in tune, whose words to jarre, nor his reason in frame, who sentence is preposterous.
Ben Jonson, Discoveries, 1641

The Underground Grammarian is a small newsletter that was published by Richard Mitchell from around 1977 until 1991. Richard Mitchell has also published a couple of books which are compilations of some of the more interesting articles plus original writings.

I typed in a few issues in the early '90s, and put them on the web a few years later. Mark Alexander (mark_alex@earthlink.net) has gone wild and gotten all of Mitchell's books on-line and is now moving to scanning in all of the Underground Grammarian issues. Definitely check out his web page at http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/.

Another web page of interest is Robert Kern Curtis' collection of six Underground Grammarian essays.

Answering Kautski is a good starting point to give you a feel for the subject matter and the style.

Books

Richard Mitchell has published four books, two of them are compilations of essays written for Underground Grammarian over the years. Less Than Words Can Say and Gift of Fire are new writings in a full book form. As far as I know, all four are all out of print. Thanks to Craig Treptow (Athens110@mcn.net), here is a complete list with publisher & ISBN information:

  1. Less than Words Can Say, ISBN 0-316-57506-2, Little Brown & Co., 1979
  2. The Graves of Academe, ISBN 0-316-57508-9, Little Brown & Co., 1981
  3. The Leaning Tower of Babel, ISBN 0-316-57509-7, Little Brown & Co., 1984
  4. The Gift of Fire, ISBN 0-671-64327-4, Simon and Schuster, Inc./Fireside Books, 1987
    ISBN 0-671-63938-2 (paperback)

Return to Jason's home page
jason-ug@molenda.com

This page last modified 2001-12-23.