Anglo-Saxon England consistently embraces all the main aspects of study of Anglo-Saxon history and culture.

This volume brings to light material evidence to further our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England.

This volume is framed by articles that throw interesting light on the achievement and reputation of the greatest of Anglo-Saxon kings - Alfred.

The pre-eminence of Anglo-Saxon England in its field can be seen as a result of its encouragement of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of all aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture. Thus this volume includes an important assessment of the correspondence of St Boniface, in which it is shown that the unusually formulaic nature of Boniface's letters is best understood as a reflex of the saint's familiarity with vernacular composition. A wide-ranging historical contextualization of The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle illuminates the way English readers of the later tenth century may have defined themselves in contradistinction to the monstrous unknown, and a fresh reading of the gendering of female portraiture in a famous illustrated manuscript of the Psychomachia of Prudentius (CCCC 23) shows the independent ways in which Anglo-Saxon illustrators were able to respond to their models. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications rounds off the book; and a full index of the contents of volumes 26-30 is provided. (Previous indexes have appeared in volumes 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25.)

Anglo-Saxon England is the only publication which consistently embraces all the main aspects of study of Anglo-Saxon history and culture - linguistic, literary, textual, palaeographic, religious, intellectual, historical, archaeological and artistic - and which promotes the more unusual interests - in music or medicine or education, for example. Articles in volume 37 include: Record of the thirteenth conference of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, 30 July to 4 August 2007; The virtues of rhetoric: Alcuin's Disputatio de rhetorica et de uirtutibus; King Edgar's charter for Pershore (972); Lost voices from Anglo-Saxon Lichfield; The Old English Promissio Regis; 'lfric, the Vikings, and an anonymous preacher in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College (162); Re-evaluating base-metal artifacts: an inscribed lead strap-end from Crewkerne, Somerset; Anglo-Saxon and related entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004); Bibliography for 2007.

The potential burial site of the mysterious Dark Age king Cerdic who founded Wessex which grew into England is revealed in a new book. Fascinating research based on an ancient land charter from the son of Alfred the Great leads to a former Bronze Age mound on the edge of a Hampshire town. This huge barrow was located near a historic trackway, a Wansdyke-style earthwork and an old Roman Road as a very public statement of power and warning to enemies. Author Paul Harper said: “The exciting discovery has brought the story of Cerdic from a lost period of British history to life. This could be overwhelming proof that Cerdic was not just a product of fantasy in the chaotic aftermath of post-Roman Britain but a real warlord who forged a powerful realm which evolved into the nation of England.” The book reveals how Cerdic emerged from the ashes of Rome in the 6th century, with a warband known as the Gewisse which offered protection to civilians from barbarians roaming the land and then fought for territory with rival kingdoms before evolving into the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. During an unprecedented climate disaster, which blocked out normal sunlight and led to a plague pandemic which killed millions, Cerdic carved out a new domain that shapes Britain up to the present day. One-by-one mysteries are solved including the identity of his shadowy son, the location of every bloody battle against enemy warlords, the links to an iconic medieval poem and the King Arthur legend.

The writings of two influential Elizabethan thinkers testify to the influence of Old English law and literature on Tudor society and self-image. Full of fresh and illuminating insights into a way of looking at the English past in the sixteenth century... a book with the potential to deepen and transform our understanding of Tudor attitudes to ethnic identity and the national past. Philip Schwyzer, University of Exeter. Laurence Nowell (1530-c.1570), author of the first dictionary of Old English, and William Lambarde (1536-1601), Nowell's protégé and eventually the first editor of theOld English Laws, are key figures in Elizabethan historical discourses and in its political and literary society; through their work the period between the Germanic migrations and the Norman Conquest came to be regarded as a foundational time for Elizabethan England, overlapping with and contributing to contemporary debates on the shape of Elizabethan English language. Their studies took different strategies in demonstrating the role of early medieval history in Elizabethan national -- even imperial -- identity, while in Lambarde's legal writings Old English law codes become identical with the "ancient laws" that underpinned contemporary common law. Their efforts contradict the assumption that Anglo-Saxon studies did not effectively participate in Tudor nationalism outside of Protestant polemic; instead, it was a vital part of making history "English". Their work furthers our understanding of both the history of medieval studies and the importance of early Anglo-Saxon studies to Tudor nationalism. Rebecca Brackmann is Assistant Professor of English, Lincoln Memorial University.

Fresh perspectives on the English clergy, their books, and the wider Anglo-Saxon church.

Anglo-Saxon England was the first publication to consistently embrace all the main aspects of study of Anglo-Saxon history and culture - linguistic, literary, textual, palaeographic, religious, intellectual, historical, archaeological and artistic - and which promotes the more unusual interests - in music or medicine or education, for example. Articles in volume 38 include: The Passio Andreae and The Dream of the Rood by Thomas D. Hill, Beowulf off the Map by Alfred Hiatt, Numerical Composition and Beowulf: A Re-consideration by Yvette Kisor, 'The Landed Endowment of the Anglo-Saxon Minster at Hanbury (Worcs.) by Steven Bassett, Scapegoating the Secular Clergy: The Hermeneutic Style as a Form of Monastic Self-Definition by Rebecca Stephenson, Understanding Numbers in MS London, British Library Harley by Daniel Anlezark, Tudor Antiquaries and the Vita 'dwardi Regis by Henry Summerso and Earl Godwine's Ship by Simon Keynes and Rosalind Love. A comprehensive bibliography concludes the volume, listing publications on Anglo-Saxon England during 2008.

Recent scholarship on the Anglo-Saxon prognostics has tried to place these texts within the realm of folklore and medicine, inspired largely by studies and editions from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By analysing prognostic material in its manuscript context, this book offers a novel approach to the status and purpose of prognostic texts in the early Middle Ages with particular attention to the Anglo-Saxon tradition. From this perspective, it emerges that prognostication in Anglo-Saxon England was not folkloric but a scholarly pursuit by monks not primarily interested in the medical aspects of prognostication. In addition, this book offers, for the first time, a comprehensive edition of prognostics in Old English and Latin from Anglo-Saxon and early post-Conquest manuscripts. Brill's Texts and Sources in Intellectual History, vol. 3