Anglo-Saxon England (No. 10)

Among topics covered in this volume, two important authorship questions are settled; the discovery of a major Northumbrian settlement is reported; the conceptions of Old English literature which have prevailed during the last three hundred years are paraded for critical inspection and substantial contributions are made to our knowledge of subjects as diverse as a monastic library of the first rank, eighth-century Latin poetic activity, metrical technique and literary convention in our greatest surviving vernacular poem; the family basis of political power in the tenth century; late Anglo-Saxon legal concepts; and scientific exposition in the early eleventh century. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year’s publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book (with a separate section onomastic section). There is also an index to volumes 6 – 10, complementing the index found in volume 5.

List of illustrations; 1. Identifiable books from the pre-Conquest library of Malmesbury Abbey Rodney Thomson; 2. Milred of Worcester’s collection of Latin epigrams and its continental counterparts Patrick Sims-Williams; 3. The prefix un- and the metrical grammar of Beowulf Calvin B. Kendall; 4. Hrothgar’s ‘sermon’ in Beowulf as parental wisdom Elaine Tuttle Hansen; 5. Lexical evidence for the authorship of the prose psalms in the Paris Psalter Janet M. Bately; 6. Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the early sections of the Historia Regum attributed to Symeon of Durham Michael Lapidge; 7. Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion and the computus in Oxford, St John’s College Peter S. Baker; 8. Princeps Merciorum gentis: the family, career and connections of Ælfhere, ealdorman of Mercia 956–83 A. Williams; 9. The laws of Cnut and the history of Anglo-Saxon royal promises Pauline Stafford; 10. Sprouston, Roxburghshire: an Anglo-Saxon settlement discovered by air reconnaissance J. K. S. St Joseph; 11. Histories and surveys of Old English literature: a chronological review Daniel G. Calder; 12. Bibliography for 1980 Carl T. Berkhout, Martin Biddle, T. J. Brown, Peter A. Clayton, C. R. E. Coutts and Simon Keynes; Index to volumes 6–10.