The Prix Volney

Volume III deals with two major nineteenth-century linguists of German origin: Friedrich Max Müller and Heymann Steinthal. Their previously unpublished Volney essays represent the far-flung interests of comparative and historical linguists in this period both in temporal and in geographical or ethnographical terms.

Max Müller's essay on `Comparative Philology and the Early Civilization of Mankind' (1849), edited by Joan Leopold, shows the earliest phases of his interest in comparative Indo-European language, culture, mythology and `race', studies in which he became a seminal figures.

Steinthal's two essays, one on languages of West Africa (1851), edited by Gerhard Böhm, and one on Chinese (1854), edited by Jerold Edmondson, show the novel phonetic, psychological and classificatory aspects of his linguistic researches, which received more recognition from the Volney Commissioners than from most of his contemporaries.

Extensive biographies and bibliographies of these two authors (by Joan Leopold for Max Müller and by Hans-Ulrich Lessing for Steinthal) accompany the annotated texts of their essays.