The Life and Times of Alfred the Great

The Life and Times of Alfred the Great is by Charles Plummer, and the title page calls it the Ford Lectures for 1901, with an appendix. The preface says the work contains the lectures delivered on the Ford foundation in Michaelmas Term, 1901. The book is dedicated to the Rev. John Earle, Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford, by his friend and former pupil the author.

The author says English learning has never been the monopoly of a professional or professorial caste, as in Germany, but has been contributed to by men of every, and of no profession. The author also says that to write on any period of early English history requires something more than the power of construing the Latin Chroniclers in the light of classical Latin, and of spelling out the Saxon Chronicle with the aid of a translation. The author says that in the Orosius version Alfred has not only translated the passage in question but has enriched it with his own local knowledge.