Old English replacement of the letter ƿynn with w. This is a proclamation from King Cnut the Great to his earl Thorkell the Tall and the English people written in AD 1020. Unlike the previous two examples, this text is prose rather than poetry. For ease of reading, the passage has been divided into sentences while the pilcrows represent the original division. The earliest history of Old English lexicography lies in the Anglo-Saxon period itself, when English-speaking scholars created English glosses on Latin texts. At first these were often marginal or interlinear glosses, but soon came to be gathered into word-lists such
1601 (Mark Twain) was originally written in 1876 for "a highly respectable, all-male writing group" as an exercise in the style of Rabelais. It was first published in the "incredibly rare" Cleveland edition of 1880, which is believed to number only four copies. The original edition was anonymous. While visiting West Point in 1881, Twain discovered that a man he met there, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, had access to a private printing press. Twain asked Wood to print off a new edition of fifty copies (now known as the "West Point edition") which came out in 1882. Twain acknowledged authorship in 1906. The