It is customary to begin a book with what the Ancients called the exordium, i.e. a statement why it was written. Books on English grammar are not wanting, but it is somewhat surprising to see how very few there are that deal with word-formation. This subject has been greatly neglected in grammatical works while the parts on phonetics, accidence and syntax have always received full attention. The last three decades have also seen the rise of pho-nemics. For the Romance languages we have the extensive treatises by Diez and Meyer-Lübke, for French those by Darmesteter, Nyrop, Meyer-Lübke, for German (to quote only the most extensive works on the subject) those by Wilmanns and Henzen. The first book on English word-formation was that of Herbert Koziol (Handbuch der Englischen Wortbildungslehre, Heidelberg 1937). It was planned as a condensation of earlier grammar accounts and monographs, but it is uncritical in that it proceeds without a previous inquiry into the essential problems of word-formation. The author proposes to give a historical description, but we get no clear insight into the derivational processes as no proper distinction is made between elements which are morphologically relevant and those which are not. The relations between stress and word. formation are not touched upon, nor are phonological changes involved by derivation.