History of the European Languages

Murray's account of the original language of Europe is an extension of Horne Tooke's ideas on language. In this two-volume work Murray sets out what he calls "the general rules of philological analysis". The book offers an intriguing insight into the state of language studies in the interim period between Sir William Jones's announcement of the general affinity between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin (1786) and the publication of the German philologist Franz Bopp's detailed study of the conjugation systems of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Persian and German (1833-52). This sought-after work on the study of language is an essential tool for historians of 19th-century language.