Explores the changes which took place in British society and culture between 550 and 1087, examining the emergence of feudalism and the growth of Anglo-Saxon church
Explores the changes which took place in British society and culture between 550 and 1087, examining the emergence of feudalism and the growth of Anglo-Saxon church
Part of an eight-volume series providing short biographies of men and women from Roman to Victorian times, Who’s Who in Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England is more than a work of reference: it is a book to read and enjoy. Drawing on the discoveries of archaeologists and other researchers, the author of this volume has prepared over 140 short biographies which convey more than the bare facts of his subjects’ lives: he places them in the contact of their time and evokes what was distinctive and interesting in their personality and achievement. The biographies are arranged in a broadly chronological rather than alphabetical sequence so that the reader may easily browse from one contemporary to the next. The index, with its many cross-references, reveals further linkages between contemporaries. Each volume is a portrait of an age, presenting history in a biographical form which complements the conventional approach.
Part of an eight-volume series providing short biographies of men and women from Roman to Victorian times, Who's Who in Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England is more than a work of reference: it is a book to read and enjoy.
Place-names, charters, coins and manuscripts are among the forms of evidence studied in this second volume. The topics range from the course of English settlement in the south-east to the power and influence of a leading aristocratic family in the tenth century and the possible presence of Jews in England in the eleventh. An important liturgical manuscript, the Bosworth Psalter, is more securely localized; the exemplars of the Vercelli Book and its probable area of origin are clarified. Several motifs in Old English literature are elucidated, and the influence of Christian doctrine on the poetry is considered in a survey of scholarly opinion and in a lively discussion on Beowulf. Bede's achievements as a scholar and teacher are examined 1300 years after his birth. The bibliography, noting all contributions to Anglo-Saxon studies in 1972, continues the annual series begun in volume 1.
