Anglo-Saxons -- Early works to 1800; Great Britain -- History -- Anglo-Saxon period, 449-1066 -- Sources
Taylor, S. (ed.): "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: MS B" <aka "The
Abingdon Chronicle I"> (Cambridge, 1983)
OTHER TRANSLATIONS--
Garmonsway, G.N.: "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" (Everyman Press,
London, 1953, 1972). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Contains side-by-side
translations of all nine known texts.
RECOMMENDED READING--
Bede: "A History of the English Church and People" <aka "The
Ecclesiastical History">, translated by Leo Sherley-Price
(Penguin Classics, London, 1955, 1968).
Poole, A.L.: "Domesday Book to Magna Carta" (Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1951, 1953)
Stenton, Sir Frank W.: "Anglo-Saxon England" (Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1943, 1947, 1971)
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ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION TO INGRAM'S EDITION [1823]
England may boast of two substantial monuments of its early
history; to either of which it would not be easy to find a
parallel in any nation, ancient or modern. These are, the Record
of Doomsday (1) and the "Saxon Chronicle" (2). The former, which
is little more than a statistical survey, but contains the most
authentic information relative to the descent of property and the
comparative importance of the different parts of the kingdom at a
very interesting period, the wisdom and liberality of the British
Parliament long since deemed worthy of being printed (3) among
the Public Records, by Commissioners appointed for that purpose.
The other work, though not treated with absolute neglect, has not
received that degree of attention which every person who feels an
interest in the events and transactions of former times would
naturally expect. In the first place, it has never been printed
entire, from a collation of all the MSS. But of the extent of
the two former editions, compared with the present, the reader
may form some idea, when he is told that Professor Wheloc's
"Chronologia Anglo-Saxonica", which was the first attempt (4) of
the kind, published at Cambridge in 1644, is comprised in less
than 62 folio pages, exclusive of the Latin appendix. The
improved edition by Edmund Gibson, afterwards Bishop of London,
printed at Oxford in 1692, exhibits nearly four times the
quantity of the former; but is very far from being the entire (5)
chronicle, as the editor considered it. The text of the present
edition, it was found, could not be compressed within a shorter
compass than 374 pages, though the editor has suppressed many
notes and illustrations, which may be thought necessary to the
general reader. Some variations in the MSS. may also still
remain unnoticed; partly because they were considered of little
importance, and partly from an apprehension, lest the commentary,
as it sometimes happens, should seem an unwieldy burthen, rather
than a necessary appendage, to the text. Indeed, till the editor
had made some progress in the work, he could not have imagined
that so many original and authentic materials of our history
still remained unpublished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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