[2][3] His extensive publications in these journals and elsewhere cover a range of topics, including the history of English literature, syntax, Czech stylistics, and cultural activism.

[2][3] In 1901, Mathesius began his studies of Germanic and Romance philology under the Neogrammarian Jan Gebauer at Charles University in Prague, earning both his B.A.

This caused him to rely increasingly on his students, including René Wellek and Bohumil Trnka, to assist him in his teaching, reading, and writing.

[2][3] It was Jakobson who pointed out the need for a center for work and discussion for young linguists in the city, which coincided with Mathesius's patriotic desire to improve the state of scholarship in Czechoslovakia.

[2][3] Henrik Becker, a young German linguist, was the first speaker invited to give a lecture, which was attended by five people (including Mathesius and Jakobson) and followed by a discussion.

[2][3][6] In addition, in 1936 the Circle began issuing a Czech periodical called Slovo a slovesnost ("Word and verbal art"), also with Mathesius as editor-in-chief.

[1] Publication of Travaux ceased in 1939 due to the onset of World War II, but the journal began to be reissued in 1995 as part of a general effort to revive the Circle.

[2][9] Mathesius's scholarly work is typically divided into three periods based on his academic and intellectual focus and his increasing interest in linguistic concerns.

He started to assemble a compendium of the history of English literature and managed to publish two volumes (1910–1915) before the loss of his eyesight cut his work short.

These works, which cover the Anglo-Saxon period through the late Middle Ages, were foundational in establishing the Anglistics department at the university.

[3] He published two major collections on the topic: Kulturní aktivismus ("Cultural Activism") in 1925, and Co daly naše země Evropě a lidstvu ("What Our Lands Contributed to Europe and Mankind") in 1940.

Linguistic approaches to information structure, including Functional Sentence Perspective and the topic-comment dichotomy, have grown out of Mathesius's writings through the work of Jan Firbas, František Daneš, Petr Sgall, and Eva Hajičová.

Critics maintain that Mathesius lacked refined methodology, and that his observations of data could not amount to much because of his reluctance to propose unified theories to account for them.

[2] Reflecting on the first ten years of the Circle, Mathesius summed up their contributions: "In foreign linguistics we fought for and won for our group the respectful title of the 'Prague School,' while at home, nobody can, without ill will, deny us the merit of having given many fresh impulses to Czech linguistic and literary research by our new standpoint and our new methods of work.