Background and Significance

1999 marked the eleven-hundredth anniversary of the death of Alfred the Great, and to mark this event, two international conferences were held to re-evaluate and contextualise Alfred's achievements and the developments of his reign.

Content and Scope

This volume includes papers given at both events and provides substantial assessments, by leading scholars, of issues of source-criticism, of the large corpus of Old English literature associated with Alfred and of developments in government and society in late ninth-century England.

Topics Covered

It also explores how Alfred and his kingdom related to the wider geo-political and cultural situation in the British Isles and continental Europe, and closes with a substantial survey of the uses and shifts in Alfred's reputation in the centuries following his death.

Importance and Use

This substantial and wide-ranging volume will become a standard reference work for anyone interested in Old English literature or Anglo-Saxon history, and will set the pattern of future scholarly debate.