Abstract
The Life of King Alfred attributed to Asser occupies a central place in English historical writing, not only because of its acceptance by scholars as the earliest extant biography of an English king — and indeed of any English lay person — but because its subject is Alfred the Great of Wessex whom Asser, the self-proclaimed author of the Life, claims to have known as a tutor and a friend. The immediacy of this extraordinary source is heightened by the author’s claim to be writing his biography while the king was still living — in Alfred’s forty-fifth year — in AD 893.1 The author follows the progress of Alfred’s life from his birth which he dates to AD 849 down to his succession to the kingship of Wessex in 871; through his First and Second Wars and to the eve of the invasion of England by Hæsten’s Danish army — or Alfred’s Last War — in 892.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Nelson, ‘Waiting for Alfred’, Early Medieval Europe, vii (1998), 123.
T. Wright, ‘Some Historical Doubts Relating to the Biographer Asser’, Archaeologia, xxix (1842), 192–201.
V.H. Galbraith, ‘Who Wrote Asser’s Life of Alfred?’, in Galbraith, Introduction to the Study of History (London, 1964), p. 122.
F.W. Maitland, ‘The Laws of the Anglo-Saxons’, Quarterly Review, cc (October 1904), 147–8.
H.H. Howorth, ‘Asser’s Life of Alfred’, The Athenaeum (1876), no. 2526, pp. 425–6; no. 2535, pp. 727–9; no. 2549, pp. 307–9; idem, ’Ethelweard and Asser’, The Athenaeum (1877), no. 2597, pp. 145–6. Life of Alfred, ed. Stevenson, pp. cx-cxv.
F.M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd edn (Oxford reprint 1967), p. 261.
D. Whitelock, The Genuine Asser (Stenton Lecture 1967; Reading, 1968), p. 3.
S. Keynes and M. Lapidge (transi.), Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1983), p. 50.
C.[R.] Hart, Byrhtferth’s Northumbrian Chronicle’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xcvii (1982), 558–9.
K. Gazzard, ‘Abbo of Fleury’ (Unpublished Oxford D.Phil thesis, 2000).
K. Sisam, Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, reprint 1962), p. 148, n. 3.
P.H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography (Roy. Hist. Soc., London, 1968), no. 898. (Henceforward referred to as Sawyer, no. 898, etc.) Sisam, op. cit., p. 148, n. 3.
C.[R.] Hart, ‘Byrhtferth’s Northumbrian Chronicle’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xcvii (1982), 558–82
M. Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Historia Regum’, A.S.E., x (1982), 97–122.
S.J. Crawford, ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Anonymous Life of St. Oswald’, in F.C. Burkitt, ed., Speculum Religionis: Being Essays… Presented to Claude G. Monteflori (Oxford, 1929), pp. 99–111.
M. Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth and the Vita S. Ecgwini’, Medieval Studies, xli (1979), 331–53.
P. Baker and M. Lapidge, eds., Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion (Early English Texts Soc., Oxford, 1995).
P. Hunter Blair, ‘Some Observations on the “Historia Regum” attributed to Symeon of Durham’, in Celt and Saxon: Studies in the Early British Border, ed. K. Jackson et al. (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 100–2.
W. Stubbs, ed. Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene, 4 vols. (Rolls Ser., London, 1868–71), i, xxxvi-xxxviii.
For the earlier part of the Worcester Chronicle, see The Chronicle of John of Worcester: Volume II: the annals from 450 to 1066, eds., R.R. Darlington and P. McGurk, transi. J. Bray and P. McGurk (Oxford, 1995).
B. Thorpe, ed., Florentii Wigorniensis monachi, Chronicon ex Chronicis (English Historical Society, London, 1848–9), 2 vols. The attribution to Florence of Worcester goes back to William Howard’s edition of the Worcester Chronicon ex Chronicis in 1592.
C.R. Hart, ‘The Early Section of the Worcester Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History, ix (1983), 251–315.
M. Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth and Oswald’, in St. Oswald of Worcester, eds. N. Brook and C. Cubitt (Leicester, 1996), p. 76.
C.[R.] Hart, ‘The East Anglian Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History, vii (1981), 268; Keynes and Lapidge, p. 52.
A.P. Smyth, Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles, 850–80 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 248–9, 269–70.
C.E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (Edinburgh, 1939), pp. 126–37.
C.[R.] Hart, ‘The Ramsey Computus’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxxxv (1970), 29–44; idem, Learning in Late Anglo-Saxon England, Chapter 8 (forthcoming).
M. McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1971), pp. 27–8.
J. Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, the first archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1821), ii, 441.
V. Sanders, ‘The Household of Archbishop Parker and the Influencing of Public Opinion’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xxxiv (1983), 535–42.
D.P. Kirby, ‘Asser and his Life of King Alfred’, Studia Celtica, vi (1971), 13.
Copyright information
© 2002 Alfred P. Smyth
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smyth, A.P. (2002). A Tour around the Manuscripts. In: The Medieval Life of King Alfred the Great. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287228_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287228_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-40228-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28722-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)