This is a monumental, and monumentally impressive, volume. With twenty chapters plus extensive and significant Introduction and Afterword, it is not possible to do its contents justice in a review while keeping said review readable. I have attempted to give brief overviews of individual chapters’ contents and some sense of the riches of the volume as a whole. Few will read 600 pages of multidisciplinary chapters cover to cover, but the consistent quality and the extent to which chapters speak with one another makes it a rewarding experience; this reviewer found it an excellent beach book. Every chapter is grounded in rigour and expertise; each tells its own clear story; and most indulge in some well-earned concluding speculation, giving a persistent sense of wider horizons and further research possibilities. Individual chapter bibliographies mean each can stand alone, but there are often extremely productive threads of common interest.
Amy Faulkner and Francis Leneghan set the scene with their editorial “Introduction: Rethinking English Literary Culture c. 850-950” (17-48). They use it to make an argument for a cultural unity across the “Age of Alfred” focused on collaborative work which used book production and literary texts to reshape individuals and wider communities. Almost every chapter refers to this Introduction’s skilful management of the question of the king’s personal involvement in translation and direct textual production; crucially, decoupling study of the texts from this focus enables a significant broadening of the corpus as that across the period of their chapter title, with Ælfred emblematic of choices made in this period. Rather than arguments about authors, then, The Age of Alfred proposes an Ælfredian studies which is interested in subtler and more significant questions of networks of influence, power, and meaning-making. The chapters that follow—for this reader, most especially those by Weaver, Toswell, and Kesling—apply this with skill and show multiple exciting future lines of work on Old English prose, material culture, and histories of power.
Section 1 explores different contexts for the reign. Christine Rauer makes a case for “Old English Literature Before Alfred: The Mercian Dimension” (51-71), including a brilliantly useful Appendix of texts that comprise a Mercian corpus (65). As she argues, this is “relatively more diverse and extensive by comparison” (53) with the traditional Ælfredian texts, suggesting diverse audiences and showing that the flowering of vernacular textual production in Wessex was not an isolated phenomenon. Working through “What?”, “How?”, and “Who?”, Robert Gallagher surveys what we know about “Writing Latin in the Age of Alfred” (73-102). Like Rauer’s, in the context of the volume this is immensely useful for what it shows about what was normal—and what exceptional—about Ælfredian work; I found the reflections on anonymity and textual value especially productive (89). Like Kesling’s chapter (discussed below), there is also an important shift here towards pointing out the likelihood of considerable numbers of female scribes and composers (92-93). In a gorgeously illustrated chapter, Georgina Pitt demonstrates “The ‘Thing Power’ of The Fabulous Alfred Jewel” (103-28) by thinking about what it means to handle the Jewel and what sort of persuasive agency it exerted over those to whom it was gifted. Pitt’s sense of the Jewel as “experiential, immediate, and ablaze” is compelling and generative; there is more to be done with thing theory and the ways artefacts (including manuscripts) exert agency over the bodies of their users, compelling them into new assemblages as part of the making of politicized power relations. “Alfredian Geographies” are brilliantly explored by Nicole Guenther Discenza (129-48). She shows how different texts “put the audience in a mental space beyond their own homes” (132), constructing the figure of the king as a key node connecting the incipient English with almost every place and people they knew of, including reaching back in time. Discenza’s reflections on Jerusalem as a place without Jews (141-45) are particularly significant in identifying the colonial strategies at play.
Section 2 turns to “Textual Criticism, Source Study, And Style.” In an epic and endlessly delightful discussion of manuscripts, scribes, and translation approaches, which whets the appetite for his forthcoming edition with Sharon Rowley but also has much to say about the culture of manuscript-making more broadly, Greg Waite offers “The Origins of the Old EnglishBede: Some Reflections on Origins and Text” (151-210). Rooted in editorial tradition and powered by close consideration of a wealth of details of scribal variation (and some fabulous images on 197-98), Waite’s chapter is never bogged down but tells a stimulating story of “the Old English Bede as a scribally layered text” (165) which circulated widely and was handled with care by different scribes. “The Idea of Decorum in the Old English Dialogues” is unpacked in a typically elegant chapter by Susan Irvine (211-28), which shows both Wærferth’s rhetorical skill (particularly beautifully unpacked 218-21), and his belief in the significance of such eloquence. Like Pitt’s study of the Alfred Jewel, Irvine shows that golden decoration—physical and metaphorical—conveys political messages as well as giving aesthetic pleasure. In “The Old English Pastoral Care: Date, Readership, and Authorship,” Daniel Anlezark examines the language of his text to access the priorities of the community who made it and their processes in doing so. Karmen Lenz considers “Refrains and Repeated Verse Lines: Patterns in Sung Verse in the De Consolatione Philosophiae and the Old English Boethius” (257-82). Lenz makes the case for the Boethius’s liturgical echoes being used skilfully to bring religious and secular authority together. In another very effectively illustrated chapter, Adrian Papahagi demonstrates “The Singularity of the Old English Boethius” (283-305). Naming a “Pseudo-Alfred” as the translator is neat and works well to focus attention on translation strategies, which in turn establish Pseudo-Alfred as a significant literary figure in his own right. Supplementing Papahagi’s reading of the translator’s skill, and echoing Anlezark’s interest in multiple lines of influence on the translations, Leslie Lockett considers “Latin Commentaries on Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae as a Source of Added Material in the Old English Soliloquies: A Preliminary Study” (307-38). Lockett’s cautious subtitle conceals an extraordinarily well-informed chapter rooted in its scholarly environment and therefore able to make a compelling case for the translator to be almost as well-read as Lockett herself.
The texts covered by Lockett set the scene for Section 3’s turn to “Vernacular Philosophy and Theology.” This opens with Erica Weaver’s quite brilliant “Bending Minds in the Old EnglishBoethius” (341-62), which convincingly shows how the text remakes those who read it. Together with the contributions from Papahagi and Lockett, Weaver’s chapter shows the sophistication of “Pseudo-Alfred” in the creation of a text which works on and with its readers’ bodies and minds. Michael Treschow’s “Easing Unease in the Old English Soliloquies and Boethius: A Mystical Turn” (363-88) is the next to explore ideas of the mind in Ælfredian translations, and uses theBoethius’s model of textual engagement to identify the related—but different—mode and meaning of the far-less studied Soliloquies. The conclusion points outwards yet further, suggesting that “contemplative and mystical tendencies” (384) could draw together a wider corpus of Old English texts; this kind of genre-reshaping is a promising line of future research. M. J. Toswell moves the volume on to the Psalms with a compelling discussion of “The Ninth-Century Psalter in England” (389-408), telling an important story of textual and liturgical experimentation shaped for a specific context, and making an implicit argument for the significance of England (especially eighth-century Northumbria) in influencing Carolingian work. In a thorough and engaging overview of the texts, which has finally convinced me that they are so significant and interesting that I must incorporate them into my own teaching, Emily Butler takes us on a journey by “Examining Dualities in the Old English Prose Psalms” (409-28). In a typically playful and richly-informed discussion, Richard North proposes “King Alfred as the Skipper in Andreas” (429-54). Readers will of course be more or less persuaded by the argument of this chapter that Jesus as captain of the boat in Andreas is constructed as a form of Ælfred of Wessex, but the chapter clearly shows oddities in Andreas’s composition and identifies productive echoes with Asser’s portrait of the king. North’s unpacking of Ælfred as a helmsman (447-48) is particularly convincing.
The fourth and final main section is on “Royal Authority and Legislation.” It opens with Omar Khalaf’s “Ælfred se casere: Kingship and Imperial Legitimation in the Old English Orosius” (457-76). Editorial placement here is generative, as the discussion of Cirencester in particular (464-65) provides a compelling parallel with North’s chapter. Like Toswell’s, Khalaf’s chapter shows how effective it is to read Ælfredian culture in a wider context, finding it remarkably self-confident and engaged in processes of making “a national, imperial consciousness” (471). Emily Kesling’s study of “The Winchester Scribes and Alfredian Prose in the Tenth Century” (477-98) makes wonderful use of Christine Voth’s doctoral thesis [1] to produce a convincing argument for the role of Nunnaminster and female scribes in preserving and re-using Ælfredian identity in the Old English Orosius and Bald’s Leechbook. Courtnay Konshuh’s consideration of “Chronicle Compilation and West-Saxon Succession” (499-522) works with the sequence of chapters by North, Khalaf, and Kesling as a sustained consideration of uses of Ælfred and, with Kesling, marvellous manuscript work—here with a fascinating recasting of questions around Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173. Konshuh shows Eadward’s settler-colonialist work in creating the empire of Engla-lond and the idea of English kingship through violence and management of history. Eadward remains in focus in Stefan Jurasinksi’s analysis of “TheDomboc in the Laws of Edward the Elder” (523-46). Demonstrating the shifting meaning ofdom-boc in the early tenth century (from the Old Testament, and specifically the Pentateuch, to a book or code of laws more generally) is a valuable contribution in itself, but here it is used as a lens through which to analyse the development of written law under Eadward, with a mix of veneration and confusion about the Ælfredian legacy and persistent pragmatism. The volume’s main contents end with Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe’s “The Wayward Tongue of Folcleasung: Oaths, Bodies, And Communal Truth” (547-62). Like Jurasinski’s analysis of dom-boc, this chapter presents itself as a study of the concept of folc-leasung (public falsehood), but uses that to generate a significant exploration of conceptions of truth, lies, law-making, and communality which has both medieval and contemporary implications.
With much refreshing cynicism about Ælfred’s words, Malcolm Godden provides a stimulating Afterword, asking “Why did the Anglo-Saxons Switch from Verse to Prose?” (565-92). There is an interesting resonance with O’Brien O’Keeffe’s chapter in a shift away from bodies to books but considering the same questions about centralisation, authority, and control.
It is striking that such an impressive, field-shaping volume feels in some senses firmly conservative. An obvious example is that most contributors use “Anglo-Saxon” (and indeed the equally imprecise and racializing “Viking”) as a descriptor, even where it gets in the way of the arguments they are making about more specific group identities in early medieval Britain. There are very few nods to theoretical discourse of any kind, let alone those about power and settler colonialism. This matters in a volume deeply and thoughtfully engaged with the establishment of a nation state; Ælfredian texts are concerned with wisdom and the health of the soul, but they are also—perhaps above all—concerned with crafting a centralised power system. The persistent drive of this corpus to associate the reader with the king and his family is a process of identity-making that is profoundly political, and as a field we could choose to work harder to articulate the colonial methodologies of texts and periods we study lest we fall into the trap of unreflective replication. Choices made here are all individually defensible, and the editors cannot make a field do something that it just does not want to do. But these inclusions and exclusions send clear signals about what it means to study early medieval English culture and why it is worth doing; whose approaches and priorities are welcome in this field and whose are not in ways that seem little changed from Tolkien telling Stuart Hall that medieval studies was not for people like him. [2] Perhaps when this volume is reread in decades to come—as it will and should be—it will feel as firmly representative of the best form of a past mode of scholarship as Kenneth Sisam’s Studies does now. [3] The rigour of the work here offers a promising forecast for the field should we collectively choose to engage with social justice in our research and writing. Or perhaps the field will choose exclusion and become ever smaller.
It is part of a reviewer’s job to find flaws, and (beyond this generalised concern) I have had to work hard to find them here. A surprising sub-theme of representations of Herod emerges from reflections in North’s and Kesling’s chapters (442 and 511), but he is not included in the index; likewise, as far as I could tell, Æthelflæd only receives one mention (515, as a side comment on Eadward’s colonialist aggression) but is also not indexed; there is no Index of Manuscripts which is especially unfortunate as some are repeatedly considered in different ways and this volume is a major contribution to how we analyse manuscript compilation and scribal work. Proofreading has been very effective: the only errors I identified are the misspelling of Craig Davis’s and Karl Reichl’s names (43, 280). The relatively pedantic nature of these comments should stand to illustrate just how effectively conceived and brilliantly put together this volume is. The editors regard the Ælfredian Prefaces as emphasizing “effort and willingness, rather than ability or success” (35). The effort involved in bringing this volume together must have been staggering. Their success is spectacular.
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Notes:
1. Christine Voth, “An Analysis of the Tenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Manuscript London, British Library, Royal 12. D. xvii” (unpubl. doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015).
2. Discussed, for example, by Dorothy Kim in “The Question of Race in Beowulf”, JStor Daily (2019), online at <https://daily.jstor.org/the-question-of-race-in-beowulf/ > (last visited October 13th 2025).
3. Kenneth Sisam, Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953).