Old English – Interesting Literature

The Best Anglo-Saxon Riddles

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle ponders some of the best of the Anglo-Saxon riddles from the Exeter Book

As I’ve remarked before, it’s a sobering thought that all of the Anglo-Saxon poetry that has survived is found in just four manuscripts which escaped the ravages of time, the pillaging of the Vikings, and the censorship of the Church: the Cotton manuscript (which is our sole source for the long heroic narrative poem Beowulf), the Vercelli book, a collection of manuscripts of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the Exeter Book.

10 Works of Anglo-Saxon Literature Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

What are the finest works of Anglo-Saxon literature? We’ve restricted our choices to works of literature written in Anglo-Saxon or Old English, so that rules out Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which, as the title suggests, was written in Latin. But there’s a wealth of great literature written in Old English, as the following pick of ten of the best testifies (we hope).

Five Fascinating Facts about the Venerable Bede

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

1. Bede is known as the ‘Father of English History’.

Bede, also known as Saint Bede and as the Venerable Bede, was born in around 672 and died in 735. Bede’s great work is Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, or History of the English Church and People, which he completed in 731. The book charts the establishment of Christianity in the British Isles, particularly in England. In 1899, Bede became the only English-born person to be recognised as a Doctor of the Church.

2. However, Bede wrote around 60 other books in addition to his History.

What’s even more remarkable, given the Viking raids on the British Isles which followed shortly after Bede’s death, most of his books have survived.