The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

About this book

Year by year, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the history of England in the language of its people, from the Roman invasion to the twelfth century. Short entries note kings crowned and killed, bishops appointed, comets and famines; longer ones tell of the arrival of the Saxons, the first Viking raid on the monastery of Lindisfarne in 793, King Alfred's long war against the Danes, the battle of Brunanburh, celebrated in a poem, the Norman Conquest of 1066, and, in the troubled reign of Stephen, a time when, the chronicler says, men said openly that Christ and his saints slept.

Context and significance

The chronicle was begun in Alfred's reign around 890 and continued in several monasteries, the last entries at Peterborough reaching 1154; it is the first continuous history in English and a priceless source. This translation was made by James Ingram and revised by J. A. Giles. Alfred's struggle with the Danes is the subject of Chesterton's The Ballad of the White Horse, and the older heroic world of the Anglo-Saxons is in Beowulf.

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