Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
This is England keeping a diary for more than a thousand years. Monk after monk wrote down what happened, year by year: kings crowned and killed, Viking raids, famines, comets, and miracles. The entries are short and plain, and that plainness is powerful. This version rests on James Ingram's 1823 translation, with Giles's readings marked inside the text. The very last entry stops mid sentence, just as the old chronicle does.
The Chronicle is not one author's book. It is a set of annals begun under King Alfred's age and continued by generations of monks at different houses, each adding terse year entries in the same plain style. Battles, successions, eclipses, hard winters, and church affairs stand side by side, sometimes in a single line, sometimes swelling into vivid accounts of invasion and resistance.
The text on this shelf must be described exactly. Its basis is James Ingram's translation, published at London in 1823, and Ingram's own Introduction stands at the front. Readings from J. A. Giles's translation of 1847 have been collated into that text and are marked in the annals, so where the two translators differ, the borrowed reading is visible rather than silently blended in.
The annals here run from A.D. 1 to 1154, through Roman and Saxon Britain, the Viking centuries, the Norman Conquest of 1066, and the troubled reign of Stephen. Then the record simply stops: the final annal, for 1154, breaks off mid sentence, at Spalding, and at, just as the Peterborough Chronicle's last entry does. That unfinished line is the honest ending, and this edition keeps it.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is England's year by year record, kept by monks over centuries, covering annals from A.D. 1 to 1154. This text is based plainly on James Ingram's translation of 1823, with readings from J. A. Giles's 1847 version collated into the text and marked. Kings, battles, famines, and comets pass in terse entries, and the final annal breaks off mid sentence, as it does in the source.
The volume opens with two front pieces that tell you how to read what follows. A Preparer's Note explains that this text is a collation, not a translation of any single manuscript, and warns you about Ingram's footnotes. Then comes James Ingram's own Introduction of 1823, a substantial essay on the Chronicle's manuscripts and value. Only after those doors do the annals begin, opening with a prefatory account of the island of Britain and entries reaching back before the Christian era, then settling into the year by year record from A.D. 1 onward. The entries start terse: a king dies, a battle is fought, a comet appears, an abbot is consecrated, each in a line or two of plain, hard prose. As centuries pass the voice deepens, and great set pieces arrive, Alfred's wars with the Danes, the long Viking pressure, the Norman Conquest in 1066, and the misery of Stephen's reign. The basis of the text, stated plainly, is Ingram's 1823 translation, with readings from J. A. Giles's 1847 translation collated into the text and marked as such throughout. The annals run from A.D. 1 to 1154, and the final annal breaks off mid sentence, exactly as it does in the source chronicle.
Edition: Translated by James Ingram (1823); J. A. Giles's 1847 readings are collated into the text and marked, as the title leaf and Preparer's Note explain. Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 657.
The first chapter
At present there are nine known versions or fragments of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" in existence, all of which vary (sometimes greatly) in content and quality. The translation that follows is not a translation of any one Chronicle; rather, it is a collation of readings from many different versions.
The nine known "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" MS. are the following:
A-Prime The Parker Chronicle (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 173) A Cottonian Fragment (British Museum, Cotton MS. Otho B xi, 2) B The Abingdon Chronicle I (British Museum, Cotton MS. Tiberius A vi.) C The Abingdon Chronicle II (British Museum, Cotton MS. Tiberius B i.) D The Worcester Chronicle (British Museum, Cotton MS. Tiberius B iv.) E The Laud (or "Peterborough") Chronicle (Bodleian, MS. Laud 636) F The Bilingual Canterbury Epitome (British Museum, Cotton MS. Domitian A viii.) NOTE: Entries in English and Latin. H Cottonian Fragment (British Museum, Cotton MS. Domitian A ix.) I An Easter Table Chronicle (British Museum, Cotton MS. Caligula A xv.)
This electronic edition contains primarily the translation of Rev. James Ingram, as published in the Everyman edition of this text. Excerpts from the translation of Dr. J.A. Giles were included as an appendix in the Everyman edition; the preparer of this edition has elected to collate these entries into the main text of the translation. Where these collations have occurred I have marked the entry with a double parenthesis (()).
WARNING: While I have elected to include the footnotes of Rev. Ingram in this edition, please note that they should be used with extreme care. In many cases the views expressed by Rev. Ingram are severally out of date, having been superseded by almost 175 years of active scholarship. At best, these notes will provide a starting point for inquiry. They should not, however, be treated as absolute.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Medieval chronicle. Ingram translation 1823, with Giles's 1847 readings collated in the text. Public domain worldwide. Share this book: WhatsApp
Starvard