Asser's Life of King Alfred
Asser c. 893 CE
This life story follows Alfred of Wessex through Viking wars and his efforts to learn. His mother offers a book of English poems to whichever son can learn them first.
76 pages 1h 28m reading time
- The earliest known life story of an English king, and the main source for nearly everything we know about Alfred's life.
- Presents Alfred as a model ruler who defended his people in war while also caring about faith, fairness in the law, and learning.
- Shows a king who suffered from long illness and learned to read late in life, yet kept working to spread education among his people.
- Its picture of Alfred as a wise and devoted king helped make him the only English ruler commonly called "the Great."
- Later writers and historians, especially in the 1800s, drew on it to turn Alfred into a national hero and a symbol of English identity.
Its only manuscript burned
The single medieval copy burned in a 1731 library fire, so the text survives only through earlier copies.
The cakes came later
The famous story of Alfred burning a woman's cakes was not in Asser's text but added by a 1574 editor.
Left unfinished
Asser, a Welsh monk at Alfred's court, wrote it while the king was still alive and never finished it.
Hints of Welsh readers
He often gave Welsh names for English places, which suggests he expected Welsh people to read it too.
Translated from Latin by Albert S. Cook