The phrase ‘Cambridge English’ comes with a weight that is more than that of simple reference to the possibility of studying English in the University. It is taken as pointing to something more substantial, a particular way of thinking about and doing English, of what that represents. In this substantial sense, Cambridge English has a particular historical development in the years between the two World Wars and a powerful social influence through the extension of its version of ‘English’ into schools and universities both in Britain and in other English-speaking countries. It can be seen, in fact, as about an intense crisis in culture and society and, as such, part of a process of critical engagement with modern civilisation that had been developed throughout the nineteenth century (the tradition so well described by the Cambridge-English-educated Raymond Williams in his book Culture and Society). To understand Cambridge English in these terms is to consider the work of two men, I. A. Richards and F. R. Leavis; it is from them that Cambridge English derived its definition, they who made it more than just English at Cambridge.

English came late to Cambridge, decisively established as an independent subject for study only in the years following the First World War. Initially, it was an optional language in the new Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos set up in 1884, with the focus linguistic and philological.