An introduction to Old English and a starting-point for the discussion of life and literature in Anglo-Saxon England; this book offers seven passages suitable for weekly or fortnightly work; each page is accompanied by a facing glossary. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle traces the history of early England from the migration of the Saxon war-lords, through Roman Britain, the onslaught of the Vikings, the Norman Conquest and on through the reign of Stephen. Michael Swanton's translation of this work - the first continuous national history of any Western people in their own language - draws extensively...

Undergraduates frequently find the fine Old English poem JUDITH the most stimulating of the surviving texts from the Anglo-Saxon period. In the past thirty years it has attracted a wide range of literary criticism both in the UK and the US. Feminist critics of English literature have been particularly interested by the ways in which the poet has adapted the traditional masculine heroic ethos of Old English poetry to a story figuring a violently active female protagonist.Yet there is no available edition of Judith which is either comprehensive or up to date, or which at all explains how and...