Anglo-Saxon England (No. 18)

This volume makes important contributions to our stock of primary manuscript evidence: it recovers parts of six previously unrecorded charters and analyses two sets of fragments, each unique in its own way – two leaves of Old Testament text written in Mercia or Canterbury early in the ninth century and six leaves of a missal written at Worcester in the mid-eleventh century. Significant issues in both ecclesiastical and secular history are tackled too – the location of Lindsey, the fate of Rutland during the Scandinavian invasions and settlements, and the state of our knowledge of the archaeology of the Five Boroughs of Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Stamford and Lincoln. Vernacular literature receives its fair share of attention as well: the relationship between author and audience is examined in the cases of a biblical poem and of the prose homiliary which is still least well understood among the principle ones extant. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year’s publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

List of illustrations; 1. Lincoln and the Anglo-Saxon see of Lindsey (with an appendix Steven Bassett; Appendix: the name Lindsey Margaret Gelling; 2. A new fragment of a ninth-century English bible Michelle P. Brown; 3. An eleventh-century English missal fragment in the British Library K. D. Hartzell; 4. The unknowable audience of the Blickling Homilies Milton McC. Gatch; 5. Holofernes\'s head: tacen and teaching in the Old English Judith Ann W. Astell; 6. Rutland and the Scandinavian settlements: the place-name evidence Barrie Cox; 7. The Five Boroughs of the Danelaw: a review of present knowledge R. A. Hall; 8. The lost cartulary of Abbotsbury Simon Keynes; 9. Bibliography for 1988 Carl T. Berkhout, Martin Biddle, Mark Blackburn, Sarah Foot, Alexander Rumble and Simon Keynes.