Elizabeth Elstob (29 September 1683 – 3 June 1756), the "Saxon Nymph", was a pioneering scholar of Anglo-Saxon. She was the first person to publish a grammar of Old English written in modern English. Life Elstob was born and brought up in the Quayside area of Newcastle upon Tyne, and, like Mary Astell of Newcastle, is nowadays regarded as one of the first English feminists. She was the daughter of Ralph, a merchant, and his wife Jane Elstob (née Hall). Elizabeth's father died when she was five, and her mother died three years later. [p. 238] She was the youngest of eight children. Before her mother died, she encouraged Elizabeth to become a scholar, for she was an admirer of learning especially for women. [p. 238] By the age of eight, Elizabeth had already mastered Latin grammar. Elizabeth became proficient in eight languages, and was a pioneer in Anglo-Saxon studies, an unprecedented achievement for a woman in the period. Following the deaths of both of her parents, Elstob was an orphan, and was raised by her aunt and uncle Charles Elstob, a prebendary in Canterbury. He disdained female education, believing that "one tongue is enough for a woman", but her aunt enabled her to learn French. [p. 238] Doris Stenton attributes the majority of Elstob's education to her brother William Elstob (1673–1715), who was sent to Eton and Cambridge and entered the Church. [p. 238] Like his sister, he was a scholar and edited Roger Ascham's Letters in 1703. Elizabeth lived with him at Oxford from 1696, and in London from 1702. As a teenager he introduced her to a small but enthusiastic circle of scholars who worked on Anglo-Saxon history and culture. He described Elizabeth as 'the delightful and tireless companion of my studies'. [p. 238] As part of her scholarly interest in early English, Elstob collaborated and corresponded with scholars like Humfrey Wanley and George Hickes. She was introduced to Hickes by her brother William. She worked with Wanley to design the typeface for her 1715 Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue, and was a skilled scribe and facsimilist in her own right. Her facsimile of the Textus Roffensis is housed at the British Library under the shelfmark Harley MS 1866. Elstob was the first editor of the Old-English Orosius, a translation often attributed to Alfred the Great, of Paulus Orosius's Historiae adversus paganos (History against the