This reader remains the only major new reader of Old English prose and verse in the past forty years. The second edition is extensively revised throughout, with the addition of a new 'Beginning Old English' section for newcomers to the Old English language, along with a new extract from Beowulf. The fifty-seven individual texts include established favourites such as The Battle of Maldon and Wulfstan's Sermon of the Wolf, as well as others not otherwise readily available, such as an extract from Apollonius of Tyre. Modern English glosses for every prose-passage and poem are provided on the same page as the text, along with extensive notes. A succinct reference grammar is appended, along with guides to pronunciation and to grammatical terminology. A comprehensive glossary lists and analyses all the Old English words that occur in the book. Headnotes to each of the six text sections, and to every individual text, establish their literary and historical contexts, and illustrate the rich cultural variety of Anglo-Saxon England. This second edition is an accessible and scholarly introduction to Old English.

The first of three volumes, this book is an edition of forty psalters written or owned in Anglo-Saxon England, half of which are glossed in Old English. The work is an invaluable tool for comparative gloss scholarship, for the study of the influence of vocabulary, the interpretation of glosses, the study of relations among psalters, and the study of the Latin text of the psalms in Anglo-Saxon England. It also presents new insights on the development of centres of learning and the impact of the psalter on literary tradition. Each volume addresses a group of fifty psalms. This landmark in Old English studies is the first attempt at a completely comprehensive edition. As an original and much-needed contribution to early medieval scholarship, it not only provides a standard edition of texts based on all known Anglo-Saxon psalters but also synthesizes many studies of psalter scholarship from the earliest times.

The Latin psalms—translated into Old English—figured prominently in the lives of Anglo-Saxons, whether sung by clerics, studied as a textbook for language learning, or recited in private devotion by lay people. The complete text of all 150 prose and verse psalms is available here in contemporary English for the first time.

First published in 2001. With the decline of formalism and its predilection for Old English poetry, Old English prose is leaving the periphery and moving into the center of literary and cultural discussion. The extensive corpus of Old English prose lends many texts of various kinds to the current debates over literary theory and its multiple manifestations. The purpose of this collection is to assist the growing interest in Old English prose by providing essays that help establish the foundations for considered study and offer models and examples of special studies. Both retrospective and current in its examples, this collection can serve as a "first book" for an introduction to study, particularly suitable for courses that seek to entertain such issues as authorship, texts and textuality, source criticism, genre, and forms of historical criticism as a significant part of a broad, cultural teaching (and research) plan.

In the late ninth century, while England was fighting off Viking incursions, Alfred the Great devoted time and resources not only to military campaigns but also to a campaign of translation and education unprecedented in early medieval Europe. The King's English explores how Alfred's translation of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy from Latin into Old English exposed Anglo-Saxon elites to classical literature, history, science, and Christian thought. More radically, the Boethius, as it became known, told its audiences how a leader should think and what he should be, providing models for leadership and wisdom that live on in England to this day. It also brought prestige to its kingly translator and enshrined his dialect, West Saxon, as the literary language of the English people. Nicole Guenther Discenza looks at the sources Alfred used in his translation and demonstrates his selectivity in choosing what to retain, what to borrow, and how to represent it to his Anglo-Saxon audience. Alfred's appeals to Latin prestige, spiritual authority, Old English poetry, and everyday experience in England combine to make the Old English Boethius a powerful text and a rich source for our understanding of Anglo-Saxon literature, culture, and society.