The AngloSaxon Chronicle Unknown 9781374920453 Books
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The AngloSaxon Chronicle Unknown 9781374920453 Books
Given the way Amazon software jumbles together different editions and translations, I want to make it clear that this review is of the Kindle edition of G. N. Garmonsway's translation of the "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," originally published in Dent's "Everyman's Library." You can check the identity of the translator using the "Look Inside" function. The yellow cover and a higher price are also clues. [Additional Note: The same publisher also offers hard-copy versions, which I have not seen.]Why is this important? To anticipate a point covered later, the digital rendering of Garmonsway's translation is excellent, with very few misprints (mostly on the order of Bray don for Braydon), includes the "special characters" used for Old English, and has excellent page-links for navigating a "Dark Age" text. And, because Garmonsway's mid-twentieth-century translation is by an excellent scholar, working with still-current editions of the texts.
The other Kindle (iBook, etc.) editions of the "Chronicle" are often public-domain versions of the 1823 translation by James Ingram, based on inadequate editions, sometimes "improved" by another archaic rendering by an indefatigable translator of medieval Latin texts, the Rev. J.A. Giles, and perhaps slightly modernized in language. Or they rely on entirely on Giles' 1847 translation, instead. So do many hard-copy and electronic editions. Ingram and Giles didn't always get it wrong, but if one or both is the translation you are using, the best way to make sure is to translate the passage from on Old English text edition; In which case, you probably don't need their help to begin with! (And if you ask where to find such a text, several editions are available, free for the downloading, in several formats, from archive.org. I suggest selecting a pdf, which won't have problems with OCR common to other formats.)
This Victorian date is not always obvious, because Giles's work is best known from Dent's Everyman's Library edition of 1912. Dent chose to reprint it, in spite of its considerable shortcomings in little things like accuracy, because the lay-out of their significantly better 1909 translation had been ruled in violation of the copyright of the text edition on which it was based.
The various editions of Ingram and Giles now have little value, except perhaps for finding out what a Victorian (or very late "Regency") gentleman might know about his own country's past!
The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" (sometimes cited as "The Old English Chronicle") is the collective name for a whole set of chronicles, in manuscripts originally scattered across England. Arranged mainly year-by-year, with some longer stories, they mostly contain contemporary, or purportedly contemporary, accounts of important events: wars, the deaths of kings, bishops, and popes, and some interesting poems about such events. Some copies have descriptive prefaces, some begin with Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain (slightly misdated at 60 B.C.) Some manuscripts also contain the charters, or alleged charters, of this or that monastery or church, normally indicating where it was copied.
The different forms are clearly derived from a single original, but show considerable variation, due to different scribal practices and where and when they were copied and continued. Information in one copy can often be supplemented or corrected from another, allowing a better glimpse of "Dark Age" England. They are mainly in Old English, but some have Latin entries, and there are medieval translations into Latin. (The fact that chronicles were *not* kept in Latin was unusual, and suggests that King Alfred was right about the poor state of learning in Viking-assaulted England.)
It has been recognized since Elizabethan times as an important work, and one or another manuscript served as the basis of series of translations into English since the nineteenth century. Eventually, efforts were made to present two or more manuscripts together, producing a new round of translations.
This translation was originally published by J.M. Dent in 1953, as part of the Everyman's Library. It is the well-regarded, and often disliked, work of Norman Garmonsway. It was replaced in the Dent list in 1996 by a translation by Michael Swanton (which I reviewed in early 2004).
Well-regarded, because Garmonsway was very accurate and the printed book followed the layout of a standard text edition of 1892 (which displayed some of the considerable variety among the manuscripts). This layout allowed the student referring to a copy of Earle and Plummer's 1892 "Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel" edition to find the appropriate passage in the original language with little effort (and, of course, vice-versa). Both volumes of Earle-revised-by Plummer are among the editions available at archive.org. (So is the -- obsolete -- translation from B. Thorpe's 1860 collection of all the then-identified manuscripts, but I have yet to find the text volume there.)
Disliked, because the same discontinuous arrangement is at first very hard to follow (and the small print in the notes and index was annoyingly hard to read).
My copy of the paperback fell apart from use, some of that use a matter of getting used to the layout -- I share both views about it.
The 1953 edition was revised in 1954, and issued in paperback in the 1970s with a few bibliographic updates (not included here). It is getting a little creaky with age, especially in terms of bibliography, identification of place-names, and the like, but the basic translation is readable (although perhaps a little formal in the twenty-first century), and accurate (although in places alternative renderings may be more persuasive),
I was in considerable doubt about whether a digital version could even be navigated, especially since I am using a smartphone, which further chops things up to fit the screen, instead of a Kindle. To my surprise, the page links (forward and back) are excellent, making it easy to follow a given manuscript (or its relevant excerpts) through the volume. Contrast and print size can be changed, and there is a variety of fonts to choose from, in the interest of legibility or aesthetics. (Tolkien fan that I am, I chose Athelas.) I found it easier to read as white-on-black, mostly to cut the glare. It should do very well on any Kindle!
To return to the translation: Swanton also preserved the 1892 placement of the text, so his translation is a page-for-page match to Garmonsway's -- probably greatly annoying those who wanted an easy-to-read story, instead of a tool for understanding medieval England. Fortunately, his translation seems as precise as Garmonsway's -- a statement I feel qualified to make, having worked through the Chronicle texts in "Bright's Old English Reader" and several other student's editions. In both versions the notes are good, and in print editons the genealogical tables and maps are detailed enough to be useful.
So those who can't stand the arrangement but want accuracy may have to look for a single-text version, or a composite. Some editions of particular manuscripts have accompanying translations. I think there was a coffee-table edition of a composite version sometime in the 1990s, but I may be confusing it with a similar "Domesday Book."
Another possiblity is the 1961 "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation," edited by Dorothy Whitelock with David C. Douglas and Susie L. Tucker (Eyre and Spottiswoode; based on translations originally published in different volumes of "English Historical Documents," 1954 and 1955; the US edition was from Rutgers University Press). However, that translation, although not tied to any Old English edition's lay-out, does show the major variants in separate columns (minor ones are reserved for footnotes), and at times is harder to follow than Garmonsway/Swanton. In some cases it indicates in footnotes that it is suppresssing irrelevant material -- which may be exactly what the reader is looking for.
To take one example, one of the two "major" manuscripts, the Peterborough Chronicle (otherwise "E") contains a long passage about the founding of the monastery where it was copied, and the lands and privileges granted by the royal donors. The property list is suspect, and there is no way to check the story of the royal conference; but in Garmonsway and Swanton (following the Earle and Plummer presentation), one can read it, and find what a tenth-century Englishman clearly thought was the correct form by which illiterate royals and nobles publicly affirmed a grant of land.
As an acid-test of the digital edition of Garmonsway, I read about half the Chronicle (through the death of Alfred's son King Edward), switching back and forth between it and a copy of the Whitelock translation. Balancing off my long familiarity with Garmonsway's arrangement and my sometimes fumbling use of the links on a very small screen, I think that the digital edition came out even.
All-in-all an excellent presentation of a good translation -- and, if a student on a limited budget can afford it, well worth the higher price.
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The AngloSaxon Chronicle Unknown 9781374920453 Books Reviews
Given the way software jumbles together different editions and translations, I want to make it clear that this review is of the edition of G. N. Garmonsway's translation of the "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," originally published in Dent's "Everyman's Library." You can check the identity of the translator using the "Look Inside" function. The yellow cover and a higher price are also clues. [Additional Note The same publisher also offers hard-copy versions, which I have not seen.]
Why is this important? To anticipate a point covered later, the digital rendering of Garmonsway's translation is excellent, with very few misprints (mostly on the order of Bray don for Braydon), includes the "special characters" used for Old English, and has excellent page-links for navigating a "Dark Age" text. And, because Garmonsway's mid-twentieth-century translation is by an excellent scholar, working with still-current editions of the texts.
The other (iBook, etc.) editions of the "Chronicle" are often public-domain versions of the 1823 translation by James Ingram, based on inadequate editions, sometimes "improved" by another archaic rendering by an indefatigable translator of medieval Latin texts, the Rev. J.A. Giles, and perhaps slightly modernized in language. Or they rely on entirely on Giles' 1847 translation, instead. So do many hard-copy and electronic editions. Ingram and Giles didn't always get it wrong, but if one or both is the translation you are using, the best way to make sure is to translate the passage from on Old English text edition; In which case, you probably don't need their help to begin with! (And if you ask where to find such a text, several editions are available, free for the downloading, in several formats, from archive.org. I suggest selecting a pdf, which won't have problems with OCR common to other formats.)
This Victorian date is not always obvious, because Giles's work is best known from Dent's Everyman's Library edition of 1912. Dent chose to reprint it, in spite of its considerable shortcomings in little things like accuracy, because the lay-out of their significantly better 1909 translation had been ruled in violation of the copyright of the text edition on which it was based.
The various editions of Ingram and Giles now have little value, except perhaps for finding out what a Victorian (or very late "Regency") gentleman might know about his own country's past!
The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" (sometimes cited as "The Old English Chronicle") is the collective name for a whole set of chronicles, in manuscripts originally scattered across England. Arranged mainly year-by-year, with some longer stories, they mostly contain contemporary, or purportedly contemporary, accounts of important events wars, the deaths of kings, bishops, and popes, and some interesting poems about such events. Some copies have descriptive prefaces, some begin with Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain (slightly misdated at 60 B.C.) Some manuscripts also contain the charters, or alleged charters, of this or that monastery or church, normally indicating where it was copied.
The different forms are clearly derived from a single original, but show considerable variation, due to different scribal practices and where and when they were copied and continued. Information in one copy can often be supplemented or corrected from another, allowing a better glimpse of "Dark Age" England. They are mainly in Old English, but some have Latin entries, and there are medieval translations into Latin. (The fact that chronicles were *not* kept in Latin was unusual, and suggests that King Alfred was right about the poor state of learning in Viking-assaulted England.)
It has been recognized since Elizabethan times as an important work, and one or another manuscript served as the basis of series of translations into English since the nineteenth century. Eventually, efforts were made to present two or more manuscripts together, producing a new round of translations.
This translation was originally published by J.M. Dent in 1953, as part of the Everyman's Library. It is the well-regarded, and often disliked, work of Norman Garmonsway. It was replaced in the Dent list in 1996 by a translation by Michael Swanton (which I reviewed in early 2004).
Well-regarded, because Garmonsway was very accurate and the printed book followed the layout of a standard text edition of 1892 (which displayed some of the considerable variety among the manuscripts). This layout allowed the student referring to a copy of Earle and Plummer's 1892 "Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel" edition to find the appropriate passage in the original language with little effort (and, of course, vice-versa). Both volumes of Earle-revised-by Plummer are among the editions available at archive.org. (So is the -- obsolete -- translation from B. Thorpe's 1860 collection of all the then-identified manuscripts, but I have yet to find the text volume there.)
Disliked, because the same discontinuous arrangement is at first very hard to follow (and the small print in the notes and index was annoyingly hard to read).
My copy of the paperback fell apart from use, some of that use a matter of getting used to the layout -- I share both views about it.
The 1953 edition was revised in 1954, and issued in paperback in the 1970s with a few bibliographic updates (not included here). It is getting a little creaky with age, especially in terms of bibliography, identification of place-names, and the like, but the basic translation is readable (although perhaps a little formal in the twenty-first century), and accurate (although in places alternative renderings may be more persuasive),
I was in considerable doubt about whether a digital version could even be navigated, especially since I am using a smartphone, which further chops things up to fit the screen, instead of a . To my surprise, the page links (forward and back) are excellent, making it easy to follow a given manuscript (or its relevant excerpts) through the volume. Contrast and print size can be changed, and there is a variety of fonts to choose from, in the interest of legibility or aesthetics. (Tolkien fan that I am, I chose Athelas.) I found it easier to read as white-on-black, mostly to cut the glare. It should do very well on any !
To return to the translation Swanton also preserved the 1892 placement of the text, so his translation is a page-for-page match to Garmonsway's -- probably greatly annoying those who wanted an easy-to-read story, instead of a tool for understanding medieval England. Fortunately, his translation seems as precise as Garmonsway's -- a statement I feel qualified to make, having worked through the Chronicle texts in "Bright's Old English Reader" and several other student's editions. In both versions the notes are good, and in print editons the genealogical tables and maps are detailed enough to be useful.
So those who can't stand the arrangement but want accuracy may have to look for a single-text version, or a composite. Some editions of particular manuscripts have accompanying translations. I think there was a coffee-table edition of a composite version sometime in the 1990s, but I may be confusing it with a similar "Domesday Book."
Another possiblity is the 1961 "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle A Revised Translation," edited by Dorothy Whitelock with David C. Douglas and Susie L. Tucker (Eyre and Spottiswoode; based on translations originally published in different volumes of "English Historical Documents," 1954 and 1955; the US edition was from Rutgers University Press). However, that translation, although not tied to any Old English edition's lay-out, does show the major variants in separate columns (minor ones are reserved for footnotes), and at times is harder to follow than Garmonsway/Swanton. In some cases it indicates in footnotes that it is suppresssing irrelevant material -- which may be exactly what the reader is looking for.
To take one example, one of the two "major" manuscripts, the Peterborough Chronicle (otherwise "E") contains a long passage about the founding of the monastery where it was copied, and the lands and privileges granted by the royal donors. The property list is suspect, and there is no way to check the story of the royal conference; but in Garmonsway and Swanton (following the Earle and Plummer presentation), one can read it, and find what a tenth-century Englishman clearly thought was the correct form by which illiterate royals and nobles publicly affirmed a grant of land.
As an acid-test of the digital edition of Garmonsway, I read about half the Chronicle (through the death of Alfred's son King Edward), switching back and forth between it and a copy of the Whitelock translation. Balancing off my long familiarity with Garmonsway's arrangement and my sometimes fumbling use of the links on a very small screen, I think that the digital edition came out even.
All-in-all an excellent presentation of a good translation -- and, if a student on a limited budget can afford it, well worth the higher price.
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