This Cambridge History of the Romance Languages stands on the shoulders of giants. A glance at the list of bibliographical references in this work should suffice to give some idea of the enormous body of descriptive and interpretative literature on the history of the Romance languages, both from the point of view of their structural evolution (the main focus of this volume) and with regard to the contexts in which they have emerged as distinct ‘languages’, and gained or lost speakers and territory, and come into contact with other languages (the focus of the second volume). This profusion of scholarship, adopting a multiplicity of approaches (synchronic, diachronic, microscopic, macroscopic) has more than once provided material for major, indeed monumental, comparative-historical synopses (e.g., Meyer-Lübke (1890–1902), Lausberg (1956–62), or the massively detailed and indispensable encyclopaedic works such as Holtus, Metzeltin and Schmitt (1988–96) and Ernst, Glessgen, Schmitt and Schweickard (2003–9)).

Much of the finest scholarship in Romance linguistics has, naturally enough, been conducted in Romance languages, or in German (the native language of some of the major founding figures of the discipline). One of our aims is to reach out to linguists who are not Romance specialists, and who may not know these languages. While the histories of some of the better-known major Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese) have been treated in English, this work is certainly the first detailed comparative history of the Romance languages to appear in English.