In the paper it has been grounded that under the conditions of forming postindustrial epoch, which is characterised by the processes of globalisation and informatisation, there exists a social demand for the specialists who have a formed preparedness for continuous self-education, including linguistic self-instruction. This presupposes developing innovative and strategic thinking as well as realising the objective necessity of continuous enhancing of their proficiency level, which is a key factor of interaction with dynamic and changeable professional environment with rapid obsolescence of knowledge, constant technological advancement, etc. It has been proved that nowadays the role of self-education, as the instrument of forming highly-qualified professionals with sufficient knowledge of foreign languages, is always growing in different countries. Therefore, educators are continually facing the task of improving the theoretical and methodological base of teaching students to be autonomous in their studies. It has been substantiated that, in view of the principle of continuity in science, introducing any innovations into the learning process in linguistic self-education should be preceded by the profound studying of the pedagogically valuable theoretical and practical experience, gained by the previous generations of researchers. Thus, the retrospective analysis of basic historical milestones of evolving the phenomenon "linguistic self-education" has been conducted and its results have been presented in this work.