


Wordsworth, 'Daffodils'

Jane Austen letter

Guide to fashion and etiquette

Alphabet books

Soldier's letter: Battle of Waterloo

Jane Austen, Persuasion

P B Shelley, 'Ozymandias'

Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Coleridge's notes on Shakespeare

Keats, 'Ode to a Nightingale'

Lord Byron, Don Juan

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Grammar for children

Yorkshire dialect

Punctuation for children

Anti-slavery poem

Diary description of London

Execution of a 12 year old boy

Modern Flash Dictionary

Dickens, Oliver Twist

London dialect in Dickens

Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

Browning, Dramatic Lyrics

Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Lear's Book of Nonsense

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

The Communist Manifesto

'How do I love thee?'

Poverty and the workhouse

Poor Letter H

'The Charge of the Light Brigade'

Get your ‘air cut!

Cookery for the poor

Mary Seacole's autobiography

Mary Seacole newspaper article

Nursery rhymes

Florence Nightingale letter

Coal mining

The Woman in White

Mrs Beeton

Mrs Beeton's Christmas

Melodrama: East Lynne

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The Queen's English

Letter from Charles Darwin

Text message poetry

George Eliot, Middlemarch

Music Hall

Victorian fashion

Freakshow posters

Street sellers

Invention of the telephone

Illusionists and conjurers

Oxford English Dictionary

Afrikaans novel

Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn

Anglo-Indian dictionary

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Circus poster

Jack the Ripper murders

Match Girls Strike

Babu English

Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

H G Wells, The Time Machine

English 'down under'
South Africa is a melting pot of languages, 11 of which have official status today. South African English has been most influenced by Afrikaans, which originated with Dutch-speaking settlers. Olive Schreiner's novel The Story of an African Farm (1883) was the first major work of fiction to come out of the country and is full of local vocabulary.
On this page
Schreiner inserted a glossary at the start of her novel, aware overseas readers would find it difficult to understand some South African words. Almost all the terms are from Afrikaans, with spellings that reflect written Dutch. Many of the words are still heard in South African English, and meerkat (ant cat) is one that is now understood by English speakers worldwide.
Shelfmark: 12654.aa.1.