The Anglo-Saxons (Penguin History)

Although I’ve only had a few hours of reading this book, I am enjoying it so much, there is so much to learn, I am very pleased with this book!

A treasure house and an extraordinary record.

I write this review as an undergraduate history student, so while my expertise may be suspect, hopefully my methodology and writing skill is not. There is quite a lot to love about this book, and more than a few things that deserve criticism. Let's start with the good qualities first.Pros--This book, on the whole, is an exceptionally well-researched and sufficiently in-depth study of the six centuries of Anglo-Saxon history. Considerable effort is expended on church history and the evolving nature of kingship in the period.--Many (almost every other page) images of manuscripts, churches, coins, and other material culture, all with descriptions of their place of finding and date.--Detailed picture essays interspersed throughout that cover more specific subjects, such as numismatics and tombs of saints. These essays are often written by guest authors and take a more "archaeological" approach to the subject, i.e. discussions of excavations and the cultural heritage of items found.--The authors do their best to inform you of the origins of the myriad sources of this history, especially who wrote them and why. They make sure to include the famous ones like Bede and Alcuin, as well as a huge amount of charters, writs, etc.Now let's look at some of the weaker aspects of the book, of which there are a few.--This book is dry. It can be quite difficult to trudge through the pages at times. The authors tend to get caught up on minute details that are frankly unnecessary. Far too many lines of text are spent on who wrote what charter when and why, when ultimately it matters little for the overarching narrative of the history they are writing.--Three authors wrote this book, each writing a whole third of it themselves. One gets the feeling that this is a reason for the dryness I complained about, and that maybe they did not communicate between themselves as much as they should have. As well, especially towards the end, there are a huge amount of typos and misspellings.--It can be hard to keep track of people, events, and dates due to the whirlwind speed that the book tears through certain events and places at. It gets quite disorienting in places, because the authors sometimes fail to remind the reader of a person's identity when they were mentioned only once before, and 10 pages ago at that.--This book glosses over some of the most important events of the time, and this is my biggest gripe with it. The Viking era, beginning in about 793, is one of the most impactful and long-lasting periods of English history, yet it receives only one chapter, one that really talks about them only for about half of its length. Similarly, the achievements of Alfred receive a chapter the same length as the chapter on post-Roman Britain, which by the authors admission is one with a scarcity of sources, making it mostly unknown and indeed unknowable. Finally, the conquest by William of 1066 receives quite literally one paragraph in the final chapter. There is too much focus on the "little" parts of history and not enough on the "big."--Very little time is spent discussing daily life of peasantry, or really anything about commoners for that matter. When I said that the focus was on church and kingship, I meant it. Almost everything in the book related to one of those concepts.In sum, this is a good book, and served as a good starting point for me, someone who doesn't have much existing knowledge of the subject. As a survey of the field, it is excellent, but a little short, at only about 245 pages or so. I came away from this feeling somehow both enlightened and disappointed, having learned quite a bit but wishing I knew a little more about a lot of content. It should be known that, even though I spent more time writing about the negatives, the positives outweigh them. I'm sure this has been made recommended reading at some college or another at some point, and it's easy to see why. But the initiated reader should be warned, there isn't much for you here.

The three leading male authors of this work were all born a long time ago, one of them as early as 1922. The other contributors are also all male. Although it is packed with all kinds of interesting information, it falls short in three important aspects:1: It is very male centred and fails to deal adequately with the distaff side of society as well as the lives of everyday folk2: It is out of date in several aspects. It was first published in 1982 and gives the impression of not having been brought up to date since then.3: Although it contains some helpful illustrations too many of them give the impression that someone has stood back and thrown them at the pages, hoping they would land in the right places. Then again, although there are some very helpful maps, they are nearly all just of England, or part of it, on their own with little or no attempt made to include maps that relate England to either the British Isles or the rest of Europe.In the town of Tamworth near Birmingham there stands a statue of a very important lady in the history of England, her right hand clutching a sword and her left on the head of her nephew, the young Athelstan, later to become one of England's greatest kings. The lady in question is Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great and Lady of the Mercians and a leading figure in bringing about a united England. And yet, in this 272 page work, she is mentioned only in passing. Such a serious omission is unforgivable in a work that purports to be about the Anglo-Saxons. Then again, Elfrida, the first crowned Queen of England, is not mentioned at all, not even concerning her involvement in the death of Edward the Martyr, notwithstanding that Elizabeth Norton has researched sufficient material to be able to write a fourteen chapter book about her. And so it goes on: omission after omission combined with 'in depth' information about certain parts of ancient England that happen to interest one of the authors, whilst other equally important places are either relegated to cursory comment or missed out altogether.The best aspect of this work is that does deal helpfully with certain aspects of English history, helping those who read it to gain a better idea of what went on in those days. Sadly, serious and unnecessary omissions of the kind we mentioned above can only add fuel to the arguments of those who are on the lookout for signs of the syndrome commonly known as MChPism. Books such as Anglo-Saxon Crafts by Kevin Leahy (available from Amazon) give a far better picture of what life was like for every day folk in Anglo-Saxon times. One of the best pieces in this work is the description of what it is was like to be an Anglo-Saxon thegn and there are some other good pieces like that. However, the fact remains that Penguin need to stop publishing this work and begin from scratch to compile another work giving a fairer, more balanced account of life in Anglo-Saxon times including research by both female and male experts. It is very difficult to know how to star-award this work. The fact that I am awarding it three stars, based on its attractive presentation, some helpful maps and some useful information is in no way to be taken in the sense that its serious omissions and bias do not remain excellent reasons for not wasting money on it when many much better and more accurate works concerning Anglo-Saxon times are available. For example, 'The Age of Athelstan' by Paul Hill (available from Amazon) gives a far more accurate and realistic account of what life was really like in mid Anglo-Saxon England than anything to be found in this work.

This valuable and informative text, written by a trio of scholars, provides an insightful, informative, and comprehensive first orientation to Anglo-Saxon history, archaeology, society and culture, that should be a necessary reference tool for everyone interested in this still-evolving discipline. Well-written and lavishly illustrated, this volume enables the reader to get a clear picture of early medieval England, following routes of historical and archaeological inquiry. Its value is increased by a number of picture essays, written by additional scholars, scattered throughout its pages, that explore side issues like the great twin monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow in Northumbria, the archaeology of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries revealing aspects of Christian conversion, the finds from Sutton Hoo and what they reveal of 7th century Saxon society, princes and culture. This volume includes a very comprehensive number of footnotes that give full bibliographic reference, and an equally full bibliography following. It does deserve repeated readings, and ready reference for any person sincerely interested in Anglo-Saxon society, politics, economics and culture, esp. someone coming at the subject for the first time. On the negative side, this volume, though it is exhaustively comprehensive in covering all aspects of Anglo-Saxon history, society and politics, art and sculpture, and how Christianity made its presence felt in this society, delivers, frankly, way too much for the general reader to easily assimilate into a workingman's-not a scholar's or serious student's-understanding. The volume could have used an end-of-text glossary covering such important terms for better understanding the Anglo-Saxon centuries as "hides", "hideage", "burh", "eorldom" "bretwald", and the like. Furthermore, a chronological listing of the series of kings of the major Anglo-Saxon regions (East Anglia, Northumbria, Wessex, Mercia, Kent, Sussex) would be a quite useful addition to the book, either before or following the text, esp. helpful for the beginner, since many of their names are quite similar to each other (esp. those with prefix of Aethel-)