FRONT OF COVER: Final: 2.4.98



ALFRED THE GREAT

War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England



RICHARD ABELS



THE MEDIEVAL WORLD




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ALFRED THE GREAT

ABELS

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THE MEDIEVAL WORLD
General Editor: David Bates
Professor of Medieval History, University of Glasgow

The influence of Alfred - king of Wessex from 871 to 899 - pervades English history. His victories on the battlefield and his administrative innovation not only preserved his native Wessex from viking conquest, but also began the process of political consolidation and unification that would culminate, within a couple of generations, in the creation of the kingdom of England.

Alfred was a great warrior king, and an effective and inventive ruler. But, even more remarkably, he was also a lover of wisdom, who sought to preserve and disseminate Latin learning by translating into English the books most necessary for all men to know . The spiritual and literary renaissance he spearheaded gave rise to a lasting tradition of English vernacular prose and learning.

He himself claimed that what he mostdesired was to live a worthy life, and to leave to posterity his memory in good works. This is precisely what he accomplished. Few bearers of the sobriquet the Great have so firm a hold on the title: eleven hundred years after his death, his name still resonates, and modern scholarship has not undermined his reputation. Yet that status carries its own dangers: he seems such a modern figure that each generation is tempted to recreate him in its own image. One of the great virtues of Richard Abels s splendid new study of the king, however, is to strip away the varnish of such later interpretations, in order to recover the historical figure - pragmatic, generous, brutal, pious, scholarly - within the context of Alfred s own age.

The book is timely, fresh and authoritative. It is based throughout on the primary sources, but it also presents a judicious assessment of recent scholarship in interpreting the man and his times. It has been written with a student and non-specialist readership in mind, but fellow specialists will find much in it to stimulate and challenge (and many will especially welcome the re-assertion of Asser s life of Alfred as a key contemporary source for the reign, against recent scholarly attack).

Richard Abels s Alfred convinces as a man who combined within himself the complexities and contradictions of his time. But, fascinating though that portrait is, this is more than just a study of an individual, however Great: the book investigates, and illuminates, the whole nature of warfare, culture and kingship in Anglo-Saxon England.

RICHARD ABELS is Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis.