A detailed and passionate argument suggesting that Beowulf originated in the pre-Viking kingdom of 8th-century East Anglia. Where did Beowulf, unique and thrilling example of an Old English epic poem come from? In whose hall did the poem's maker first tell the tale? The poem exists now in just one manuscript, but careful study of the literary and historical associations reveals striking details which lead Dr Newton to claim, as he pieces together the various clues, a specific origin for the poem. Dr Newton suggests that references in Beowulf to the heroes whose names are listed in Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies indicate that such Northern dynastic concerns are most likely to have been fostered in the kingdom of East Anglia. He supports his thesis with evidence drawn from East Anglianarchaeology, hagiography and folklore. His argument, detailed and passionate, offers the exciting possibility that he has discovered the lost origins of the poem in the pre-Viking kingdom of 8th-century East Anglia. SAMNEWTON was awarded his Ph.D. for work on Beowulf.

This book is the first full-scale scientific study of East Anglian English. The author is a native East Anglian sociolinguist and dialectologist who has devoted decades to the study of the speechways of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex. He examines their relationships to other varieties of English in Britain, as well as their contributions to the formation of American English and Southern Hemisphere Englishes.

What were the lives of Africans in provincial England like during the early modern period? How, where, and when did they arrive in rural counties? How were they perceived by their contemporaries? This book examines the population of Africans in Norfolk and Suffolk from 1467, the date of the first documented reference to an African in the region, to 1833, when Parliament voted to abolish slavery in the British Empire. It uncovers the complexity of these Africans' historical experience, considering the interaction of local custom, class structure, tradition, memory, and the gradual impact of the Atlantic slaving economy. Richard C. Maguire proposes that the initial regional response to arriving Africans during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was not defined exclusively by ideas relating to skin colour, but rather by local understandings of religious status, class position, ideas about freedom and bondage, and immediate local circumstances. Arriving Africans were able to join the region's working population through baptism, marriage, parenthood, and work. This manner of response to Africans was challenged as local merchants and gentry begin doing business with the slaving economy from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. Although the racialised ideas underpinning Atlantic slavery changed the social circumstances of Africans in the region, the book suggests that they did not completely displace older, more inclusive, ideas in working communities.

Angles on a Kingdom analyses changing attitudes towards East Anglia within early medieval England as revealed in several important literary texts.

Railway histories are always popular and the continued regard for heritage railways around the UK highlights the nostalgia the industry evokes. Inevitably many concentrate on the locomotives, lost stations and lines that crisscrossed the region. What has often been missing have been the stories of the individual railway workers and the conditions under which they worked, despite some valuable autobiographies and memoirs of railwaymen who worked in the area. This volume aims to address this gap, bringing to life stories of railway workers within a context of the changing nature of the industry from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day.Heavily influenced by his personal and family memories, Douglas Bourn draws on available memoirs, alongside other evidence from railway magazines and local and regional newspapers, to provide the reader with an introduction to the fascinating story of railways in the region. The book takes readers on a historical journey starting with the creation of the first railways in East Anglia, via the growth of a network that promoted and served the agricultural, industrial and tourist development of the towns throughout the three eastern counties, and ending with their almost inevitable decline, as transport needs changed in the post Second World War period.

This collection of essays discusses East Anglia in the context of a medieval maritime framework and explores the extent to which there was a distinctive community bound together by the shared frontier of the North Sea during the Middle Ages. It brings together the work of a range of international scholars and includes contributions from the disciplines of history, archaeology, art history and literary studies.