Professor Charlotte Brewer started her research career as a medievalist, with publications on the late Middle English poem Piers Plowman and its textual and editing history, e.g. Piers Plowman: the Z Version (ed. with A. G. Rigg, Toronto, 1983) and Piers Plowman: the Evolution of the Poem (Cambridge University Press, 1996; reprinted 2006). She retains Middle English research interests but for the moment she is working on the history and character of the Oxford English Dictionary. Much of this research can be seen on her website Examining the OED.
Her current projects explore OED’s coverage of individual authors and periods, its consequent influence on literary and linguistic history, and its treatment of areas of language relating to culture and society (e.g. politics, sex & gender, usage and correctness).
