Proposals for “Fixing the Language”

• Dryden with a group of other members of the Royal Society's  “committee for improving the English language”, set up in 1664 explored the idea of founding an institution to look after the language

• An English Academy might undertake a grammar, a dictionary, and spelling reform

• The arrival of bubonic plague in 1665 curtailed debate

• Daniel Defoe in an article 'Of Academies' (1697): “The Work of this Society should be to polish and refine the English Tongue, and advance the so much neglected Faculty of Correct Language...”

• Jonathan Swift formulated 'A proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English tongue' (1712): an Academy would 'fix language forever'

• All proposals for an Academy came to nothing

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