Table of Contents

The treaty of Alfred and Guthrum; ecclesiastical lands and the defence of Wessex in the first Viking age; the Anglo-Saxon chronicle and the origins of English square miniscule script; between Alfred the Great and Edgar the Peaceable - Aethelstan, first King of England; learning and the Church in the England of King Edmund I, 939-946; King Alfred and the 10th-century reform of the English Church.

Reviews

The first three essays have as their mainspring...the treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, ecclesiastical lands and the defence of Wessex during the first Viking age, and the Parker manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle... [they] are object lessons in the close examination and elucidation of texts. `The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Origins of English Square Minuscule Script' lies at the book's heart...a masterpiece of argument at once detailed and wide ranging. The volume is informed by a steadiness of purpose - to ask the hard questions that will lead to the freshest and most accurate view of tenth-century England - and a consistency of scholarship at the highest level that, taken together, are bound to make it widely influential for years to come. Disparate but richly detailed studies...full of fascinating detail.
*N.P. BROOKS, SOUTHERN HISTORY*