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The two volumes under review are characterized by an absolute wealth of material, the exceptional clarity of the presentation, and the theoretical conclusions which take into account the often conflicting empirical data.--NLO The primary interest of these volumes is that the authors have made extensive and intelligent use of archives. Many little-known and often unpublished articles are cited... Any scholar working on the Russian eighteenth or early nineteenth century will find French and Russian in Imperial Russia immensely useful on aspects of the language and culture of the period, especially for the access these volumes provide to the relevant Russian archival documents. Libraries in institutions to which SEEJ readers belong need these books. And American Slavists clearly must stay alert to the future scholarly enterprises of our colleagues in Edinburgh. --Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour, Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center Slavic and East European Journal Written by an international cast of authors, ranging from doctoral candidates to senior scholars, the essays probe an impressively wide variety of published and unpublished materials. Each volume opens with a substantial editorial introduction and ends with a brief summary of its contributors' conclusions. Since the standard of contributions is uniformly high, the only sense in which a reader might feel disappointed, remembering the title of these books, is that they fail to mention not only Valuev but practically everyone else in imperial Russia after 1850. The historian, perhaps more than the linguist or literary scholar, is bound to feel a sense of loss. Still, it is churlish to ask for more when so much is already on offer. Whatever these volumes may lack in chronological range is more than compensated by their multi-disciplinary variety, sensitivity to gender, and strength in depth. While most of the essays are theoretically well informed, none descends into sociolinguistic jargon and even the most technical among them remain accessible to the non-specialist. Readers will nevertheless need a good knowledge of Russian and French to grasp their significance, a requirement that will unfortunately take them beyond the reach of most Anglophone undergraduates. They will be missing a treat. No less an authority than Peter Burke regards the whole undertaking as 'a milestone in the development of the social history of language'. That is no exaggeration. --Simon Dixon, UCL Slavic and East European Review What is compelling about the twenty-four essays in these volumes is the way the authors deploy their individual disciplinary perspectives as a lens through which to explore the historical interplay between French and Russian during that period, and to consider what this interplay reveals about Russia at the time... There has been very little investigation of the history of Western European languages in Russia, but these two volumes richly and successfully redress the balance. Although each volume has a specific focus - the first on 'language use among the Russian elite', and the second on 'language attitudes and identity' - taken together, the essays 'sharpen the focus on linguistic matters and paint a fascinating picture of the shifting interplay between French and Russian at the heart of the social, political, and cultural history of Russia... The two volumes constitute an original, thought-provoking, and absorbing contribution to language studies and the history of Russia. They should be of enormous interest to specialists, students, and many general readers. --Michele Cohen, Richmond American International University in London Language and History These two volumes are a fine introduction to a topic of enquiry that has, until now, received much less scholarly attention than it deserves. --Adam Coker Modern Langauge Review The two volumes in question are an ambitious undertaking by a group of scholars specializing in Russian Studies. The contributors are well-versed in each other s work and the field of Russian Studies. The collection can be recommended also to those who do not specialize in Russian Studies, but have more general interests such as translation culture, historical sociolinguistics, and multilingualism in Europe in the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries. --Anna Vershik Ab Imperio The far too sparse notes de lecture provided above cannot give an adequate impression of the sheer wonderful richness of all that is contained within the covers of the two volumes here reviewed. This work is a major milestone in historical sociolinguistics... all contributions are written in a lucid and easily accessed style, free of unnecessary jargon ... I commend both these two volumes, which together make up French and Russian in Imperial Russia , very warmly indeed to all kinds of possible readers, adding a particular plea for them to make sure that they read both books; I have no doubt but that they will find them as instructive, interesting, readable and scholarly as I have. --Anders Ahlqvist, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies Linguist List

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Derek Offord is Research Professor in Russian at the University of Bristol. Lara Ryazanova Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Russian and Academic Director of the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre at the University of Edinburgh. Vladislav Rjeoutski is Research Fellow at the Deutsches Historisches Institut Moskau. Gesine Argent is Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Bristol.

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