Paolo Amoroso (@[email protected]) writes:

This paper on the early standardization of Common Lisp (full text) is very interesting despite having been published in 1982, even prior to CLtL1.

By tracing the history of Lisp the paper highlights how the two major dialects at the time, MacLisp and Interlisp, influenced the design of Common Lisp. And it explains why the former was the major influence and little of the latter ended up in the new standard.