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King Alfred of England

Jacob Abbott

Book Overview: 

The life and accomplishments of England's sole title holder of "The Great." King Alfred defended England from Viking invasions and ushered in an era of learning and progress for the British Isles.

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .een then, for several centuries, circulating throughout England, narrating and praising King Arthur's exploits, had given him so wide a fame, that great interest was felt in the recovery and the identification of his remains. The searchers found the pyramids in the cemetery of the abbey. They dug between them, and came at length to a stone. Beneath this stone was a leaden cross, with the inscription in Latin, "HERE LIES BURIED THE BODY OF GREAT KING ARTHUR." Going down still below this, they came at length, at the depth of sixteen feet from the surface, to a great coffin, made of the trunk of an oak tree, and within it was a human skeleton of unusual size. The skull was very large, and showed marks of ten wounds. Nine of them were closed by concretions of the bone, indicating that the wounds by which those contusions or fractures had been made had been healed while life continued. [page 56] The tenth fracture remained in a condition which showed that that had. . . Read More

Community Reviews

英格兰人也是奇怪,以公元4世纪北欧(丹麦)日尔曼入侵中盎撒人为正统。明明前面有辉煌的罗马人,盎-撒之前还有凯尔特人,打败盎-撒人的有诺曼底人。盎-撒人与维金人人、诺曼人同根同源。也不知道他们怎么分的清。
阿尔弗雷德大帝,英国七国时代统一的王,因此称帝。前9世纪下半叶,大唐已经走向了末路……没什么感觉的一本书。
作者怎么翻译的,副标题胡说八道“英格兰开国”。原文没有,说开国也未必不对,类比嬴政。但容易误导。

While the book certainly portrays the thoughts of the time early on and is certainly a little alarming, I still found the book informative and easy to read. Alfred the Great truly was a great man. This is one of my favorite periods of history to read about.

This is a good, interesting biography of King Alfred who oversaw the beginning of the end for the marauding Danes. Some of it sounded like a hagiography, and I didn't like that.

Abbott is flawed by being inherently racist, believing that the Anglo Saxons and other Europeans were superior to others. He apparently skipped the history of the dark ages, to say nothing of the Roman Emperors The rest of the story is a nice, narrative style history of an earlier ages. Modern Schol

Alfred is a remarkable figure in the history of England. He is credited with founding the English monarchy, codifying laws, founding the University of Oxford, and inventing the lantern.

I found Abbott's book a bit of a slog. And there is that section on pp 34-36 where he evaluates the Indian, Africa

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