In his Preface to Laurence Nowell's Vocabularium Saxonicum, Albert H. Marckwardt writes: "Many years ago, when I first read Laurence Nowell's Vocabularium Saxonicum in manuscript, I was firmly convinced that it was of sufficient intrinsic interest to merit publication. It seemed desirable that a man like Nowell, so important in the development of Old English studies, should become more than a footnote in an occasional history of linguistic or legal scholarship. His dictionary, reflecting so clearly the personality of a true scholar with broad and human interests, deserved to be made generally available despite the advance of linguistic knowledge since its time."