Engelsche Spraakkunst door Lindley Murray: bewerkt volgens de leerwijze van Agron; ten dienste der scholen, en der genen, die de engelsche taal, op eene spoedige wijze, grondig willen leeren, 3rd ed. (Amsterdam: G. J. A. Beijerinck, 1829).
A Dutch translatiion/adaptation of Lindley Murray's English Grammar (1795) was first published in 1816 (subsequent editinos were published in 1822, 1829, 1837, 1846, 1852, 1860, and 1871), based on the 26th edition of Murray's original. It was published annonymously, but now it is known that the author is Rudolph Van der Pijl (1790-1828).
It is not a simple translation of the original, but as shown in the title, the author introduces the didactic and comparative teaching method first adopted by A. N. Agron in his
Versameling van Opstellen (1794). Thus every sample sentence in English is rephrased in Dutch, which enables readers to see structural similarities and differences between the two languages, while each section or chapter includes plenty of Dutch-English translation exercises, which (obviously) are not included in the original. Murray's grammar is divided into four parts, namely, orthography, etymology (i.e., morphology), syntax, and prosody, but the Dutch version covers only the second and third parts, omitting the others. Agron's name disappeared from the title page from the fifth edition on, but its contents remained basically the same.
As I wrote
elsewhere, the first Englsih grammar in Japan,
Eibunkan, is a translation of (the second edition of) this book, and it inherits those peculiarities in the Dutch version, keeping the comparative, dual language method (while adding Japanese translations of words, phrases, and sentences) as well as the Dutch-English translation exercises.
The book is intended chiefly for school use and is produced rather poorly; most copies seem to have been lost after heavy use, and as a result, it is quite rare now. According to
the angiquarian bookshop I purchased this copy from, there are only two copies traceable in the Netherlands: one in the National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague, and the other in the University of Amsterdam Library. At least two copies (other than my own) are preserved in Japan, one in the National Diet Library in Tokyo, and another in the library of Sakura Senior High School (千葉県立佐倉高等学校) in Chiba Prefecture, which inherited many books from the library of the old feudal domain of Sakura. Both of these copies preserved in Japan are the sixth edition, while mine is the third edition, which is said to be the oldest edition available in a Dutch library!
For a detailed study on the Dutch version, see F. A. Wilhelm,
English in the Netherlands: A History of Foreign Language Teaching 1800-1920 with a Bibliography of Textbooks (Utrecht: Gopher, 2005), pp. 388-98 (available
online).
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