Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Defining English gender; 2. The gender shift in histories of English; 3. A history of gender, people and pronouns: the story of generic he; 4. Third-person pronouns in the gender shift: why is that ship a she?; 5. Gender and asymmetrical word histories: when boys could be girls; 6. Implications for non-sexist language reform; Appendix 1. Background on early English personal pronouns; Appendix 2. Helsinki corpus texts and methodology; References; Index.