I have not listed classic English texts which are available in many editions (e.g. Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare).
Bailey, Richard W.: Images of English (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991)
Baugh, Albert C., and Cable, Thomas: A History of the English Language (New York, Prentice Hall, 1951, 5th edn 2001)
Blake, N. F.: A History of the English Language (New York, New York University Press, 1998)
Bryson, Bill: Mother Tongue (New York, William Morrow, 1990)
Burchfield, Robert: The English Language (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985, reissued with corrections 2003)
Crystal, David: The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, 2nd edn 2003)
Crystal, David: English as a Global Language (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, 2nd edn 2003)
Crystal, David: The English Language (New York, Penguin Books, 1998, 2nd edn 2002)
Elmes, Simon, and Bragg, Melvyn: The Routes of English, vols. 1–4 (London, BBC Consumer Publishing, 1999–2001)
Flavell, Linda and Roger: The Chronology of Words and Phrases (London, Trafalgar Square, 2000)
Freeborn, Dennis: From Old English to Standard English (London, Macmillan, 1992, 2nd edn 1998)
Graddol, David, Leith, Dick, and Swann, Joan (eds.): English: History, Diversity and Change (London, Routledge, 1996)
Hughes, Geoffrey: Swearing (Oxford, Blackwell, 1991)
Hughes, Geoffrey: Words in Time (Oxford, Blackwell, 1988)
Kacirk, Jeffrey: Altered English (San Francisco, Pomegranate, 2002)
Katzner, Kenneth: The Languages of the World (revised edn) (New York, Routledge, 1986, 3rd edn 2002)
Leith, Dick: A Social History of English (New York, Routledge, 1983, 2nd edn 1997)
McArthur, Tom: The English Languages (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998)
McArthur, Tom: The Oxford Guide to World English (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002)
McCrum, Robert, MacNeil, Robert, and Cran, William: The Story of English (New York, Viking Penguin, 1986, 3rd edn 2003 from Penguin Books)
Montagu, Ashley: The Anatomy of Swearing (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967)
Partridge, Eric: A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (London, Routledge, 1949) (There are later editions, but we looked at this one particularly for Second World War slang.)
Pennycook, Alastair: The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (Boston, Addison-Wesley, 1994)
Rees, Nigel: Dictionary of Word & Phrase Origins (London, Cassell, 1996)
Ricks, Christopher, and Michaels, Leonard (eds.): The State of the Language, 1990s Edition (London, Faber, 1990)
Singh, Ishtla: Pidgins and Creoles, An Introduction (London, Edward Arnold, 2000)
Watts, Richard, and Trudgill, Peter (eds.): Alternative Histories of English (London, Routledge, 2002)
Williams, Raymond: Keywords (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1976, revised edn 1985)
The Oxford English Dictionary has been a constant resource, and the search facilities of the online version were particularly helpful.
Canny, Nicholas (ed.): The Origins of Empire: The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 1 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998)
Marshall, P. J. (ed.): The Eighteenth Century: The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 2 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998)
Morgan, Kenneth O. (ed.): The Oxford History of Britain (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984)
Porete, Andrew (ed.): The Nineteenth Century: The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 3 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999)
Alfred: On the State of Learning in England (Hatton Ms. 20, Bodleian Library, Oxford); reprinted in Whitelock, Dorothy (ed.), Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 15th edn 1975)
Anon.: Beowulf, ed. Klaeber, Fr. (Lexington, D.C. Heath, 3rd edn 1950)
Baker, Derek (ed.): England in the Early Middle Ages: Portraits and Documents (London, Hutchinson, 1968)
Garmonsway, G. N. (trans.): The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (London, Dent, 1953)
Gordon, R. K. (trans.): Anglo-Saxon Poetry (London, Dent, 1926)
Heaney, Seamus: Beowulf, A New Translation (New York, Farror, Straus & Giroux, 2000)
Henry of Huntingdon: The History of the English People, 1000–1154, trans. Greenaway, Diana (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996)
Keynes, Simon, and Lapidge, Michael (eds.): Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (New York, Penguin Books, reissue edn, 1984)
Swanton, Michael (trans.): Anglo-Saxon Prose (London, Dent, 1975)
Chapman, John, and Hamerow, Helena (eds.): Migrations and Invasions in Archaeological Explanation (Oxford, British Archaeological Report, International Series 664, 1997)
Ekwall, Eilert: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Place Names (4th edn) (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1960)
Golding, Brian: Conquest and Colonisation (London, Palgrave, 1994, revised edn 2001)
Page, R. I.: Runes (London, British Museum Press, 1987)
Ward-Perkins, Bryan: “Why Did the Anglo-Saxons Not Become More British?”, English Historical Review, vol. CXV, no. 462, June 2000
Wrenn, C. L.: A Study of Old English Literature (London, Harrap, 1967)
Baker, Derek (ed.): England in the Later Middle Ages: Portraits and Documents (London, Hutchinson, 1968)
Bennett, J. A. W., and Smithers, G.V.: Early Middle English Verse and Prose (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1968)
Chaucer, Geoffrey: Works, ed. Robinson, F. N. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1957, 2nd edn 1974)
Davies, R. T. (ed.): Medieval English Lyrics (Chicago, Northwestern University Press, reissue edn 1988)
Barber, Richard: The Knight and Chivalry (revised edn) (Woodbridge, The Boydell & Brewer, revised edn 1995)
Boitani, Piero, and Mann, Jill (eds.): The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986)
Cannon, Christopher: The Making of Chaucer’s English (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Clanchy, M. T.: England and Its Rulers (Oxford, Blackwell, 2nd edn 1998)
Paterson, Linda M.: The World of the Troubadours (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Postan, M. M.: The Medieval Economy and Society (New York, Viking, 1985)
De Rougemont, Denis: Love in the Western World (trans. Montgomery Belgion) (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1983)
Weir, Alison: Eleanor of Aquitaine (New York, Ballantine Books, 2000)
West, Richard: Chaucer, 1340–1400 (London, Constable Robinson, 2000)
Ziegler, Philip: The Black Death (London, Collins, 1969)
Davis, Norman (ed.): The Paston Letters (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1963)
Kempe, Margery: The Book of Margery Kempe (ed. Staley, Lynn) (New York, W. W. Norton, 2001)
Langland, William: Piers Plowman, translated by Economou, George (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996)
Bobrick, Benson: Wide As the Waters: The Making of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2001)
Duffy, Eamon: The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992)
Duffy, Eamon: The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001)
Febvre, Lucien, and Martin, Henri-Jean (trans. Gerard, David): The Coming of the Book (New York, Verso Books, reprint edn 1990)
Keen, Maurice: English Society in the Later Middle Ages (New York, Penguin, reissue edn 1991)
Shiels, W. J.: The English Reformation (London, Longman, 1989)
Bergon, Frank (ed.): The Journals of Lewis and Clark (New York, Penguin Books, 1989)
Jones, Charles Colcock, Jr: Gullah Folktales from the Georgia Coast (Athens, GA, University of Georgia Press, 2000)
Webster, Noah: Blue-Backed Spelling Book; Anon.: New England Primer (Oklahoma City, Hearthstone Publishing, 1998)
Wood, William: New England ’s Prospect (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1977)
Boorstin, Daniel J.: The Americans: The Colonial Experience (New York, Random House, 1958)
Boorstin, Daniel J.: The Americans: The National Experience (New York, Random House, 1965)
Brogan, Hugh: The Penguin History of the U.S.A. (New York, Penguin, 2nd edn, 2001)
Bryson, Bill: Made in America (London, Secker & Warburg, 1994)
Cutler, Charles L.: O Brave New Words!: Native American Loanwords in Current English (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1994)
Dillard, J. L.: Black English: Its History and Usage in the United States (New York, Random House, 1972)
Dillard, J. L.: A History of American English (Harlow, Longman, 1992)
Ellis, Joseph J.: After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture (New York, W. W. Norton, 1979)
Kamensky, Jane: Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England (New York, Oxford University Press, 1997)
Mencken, H. L.: The American Language (4th edn) (New York, Knopf, 1936)
Mufwene, Salikoko S., Rickford, John R., Bailey, Guy, and Baugh, John: African-American English (London, Routledge, 1998)
Rickford, John Russell, and Rickford, Russell John: Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 2000)
Simmons, James C.: Star-Spangled Eden (New York, Carroll & Graf, 2000)
Sloan, William David, and Startt, James D.: The Media in America (Northport, Vision Press, 1999)
Wright, Ronald: Stolen Continents: The “New World ” Through Indian Eyes (New York, Hougton Mifflin, 1992)
Jennings, Humphrey: Pandaemonium: The Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers (New York, MacMillan, 1985)
Johnson, Samuel: Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare (ed. Woudhuysen, H. R.) (New York, Penguin, 1990)
Mackie, Erin (ed.): The Commerce of Everyday Life: Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator (Boston, Bedford/St. Martins, 1998)
Mayhew, Henry: London Labour and the London Poor (London, Penguin Books, 1985)
Ross, Angus (ed.): Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator (New York, Penguin Books, 1982)
Ayto, John: The Oxford Dictionary of Rhyming Slang (New York, Oxford University Press, 2003)
Colley, Linda: Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992)
Crowley, Tony: Proper English? Readings in Language, History and Cultural Identity (New York, Routledge, 1992)
Fryer, Peter: Mrs. Grundy: Studies in English Prudery (London, Dobson Books, 1963)
Görlach, Manfred: English in Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Holroyd, Michael: Bernard Shaw: The Pursuit of Power (New York, Vintage Books, 1991)
De Mare, Eric: London 1851: The Year of the Great Exhibition (London, The Folio Society, 1972)
Montagu, Ashley: The Anatomy of Swearing (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001)
Mugglestone, Lynda: Talking Proper: The Rise of Accent as a Social Symbol (2nd edn) (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003)
O’Toole, Fintan: A Traitor’s Kiss: The Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998)
Porter, Roy: Enlightenment (Amherst, Prometheus, 1997)
Rogers, Pat: Hacks and Dunces (London, Methuen, 1980)
Romaine, Suzanne (ed.): The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. IV: 1776–1997 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Baker, Philip, and Bruyn, Adrienne: St. Kitts and the Atlantic Creoles: The Texts of Samuel Augustus Mathews in Perspective (London, University of Westminster Press, 1998)
Hakluyt, Richard: Voyages and Discoveries (London, Penguin Books, 1972) (includes John Hawkins’ voyage to the Indies, 1564)
Krise, Thomas W. (ed.): Caribbeana: An Anthology of English Literature of the West Indies 1657–1777 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999) (includes James Grainger’s The Sugar Cane)
Parkes, Fanny: Begums, Thugs and White Mughals (ed. Dalrymple, William) (London, Eland Books, 2003)
Yule, Col. Henry, and Burnell, Arthur Coke: Hobson-Jobson (London, John Murray, 1986)
Black, Clinton V.: Pirates of the West Indies (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Burchfield, Robert (ed.): The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. V — English in Britain and Overseas: Origins and Development (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Crystal, David: Language Death (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Dalby, Andrew: Language in Danger (New York, Columbia University Press, 2003)
Delbridge, A., et al. (eds.): The Macquarie Dictionary: Australia’s National Dictionary (revised 3rd edn) (Macquarie, 2001)
Farrington, Anthony: Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia 1600–1834 (London, British Library, 2002)
Hughes, Robert: The Fatal Shore (New York, Knopf, 1987)
James, Lawrence: Raj: The Making of British India (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1998)
Lewis, Ivor: Sahibs, Nabobs and Boxwallahs: A Dictionary of the Words of Anglo-India (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1991)
Mitchell, David: Pirates (New York, Delacorte Press, 1976)
Nettle, Daniel, and Romaine, Suzanne: Vanishing Voices (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000)
Tully, Mark: No Full Stops in India (New York, Viking, 1991)
Ayto, John: Twentieth Century Words (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999)
Fussell, Paul: The Great War and Modern Memory (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000)
Gardiner, Juliet: Over Here: The Gls in Wartime Britain (London, Collins & Brown, 1992)
Graddol, David: The Future of English? (London, British Council, 1997)
Graddol, David, and Meinhof, Ulrike H. (eds.): English in a Changing World (AILA Review 13) (Oxford, Association Internationale de Linguistique Applique/International Association of Applied Linguistics, 1999)
Partridge, Eric: A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (3rd edn) (London, Routledge, 1949) (There are later editions, but this was useful for finding wartime slang.)
Partridge, Eric, and Clark, John W.: British and American English Since 1900 (Westport, Greenwood Press, reprint 1968)