SOME RECENT EDITIONS OF THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLES

Abstract

After a long gestation, the Collaborative Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was first advertised in a prospectus issued in 1981. Originally no fewer than twenty-three volumes were planned for the series, each by a separate editor, under the joint general editorship of David Dumville and Simon Keynes. Of these, volumes 3-9 were to be straightforward editions of the Old English texts generally known as MSS A-G; volumes 1-2 and 10-14 were to be comparative editions of chronological groups of annals taken from these texts or their supposed precursors; volumes 15-22 were to be editions of various related chronicles and annals in Latin and Anglo-Norman. Finally, volume 23 was planned as a general introduction to the series, with notes and a comprehensive index. One major Latin chronicle, generally known as `John of Worcester', was omitted from the series because a separate edition by Patrick McGurk was already in hand. The first three volumes to be published were volume 4, MS B, ed. Simon Taylor (1983); volume 17, The Annals of St Neots with Vita prima Sancti Neoti, ed. David Dumville and Michael Lapidge (1985); and volume 3, MSA, ed. Janet M. Bately (1986).t Now, after a gap of nearly a decade, volumes 1, 6 and lo have appeared. Meanwhile there have been unannounced revisions of the original plan. Of the recent editions, only volume 6 has been published as described in the prospectus. Originally, volume 1 was to have been entitled The Common Stock (MSS,ABCG, with ref. to DEF), to A.D. 892; in the event this number now appears as a facsimile of MS F, a new departure for the series. Volume lo, originally planned to carry the title Continuations of the Common Stock, A.D. 893-975, is now presented as The Abingdon Chronicle, which was originally to be volume 12. Has the ancient concept of a `Common Stock' been set aside? Only time can tell. Having noted that the general editors of the series are no longer named in the two most recently published volumes, I made some enquiries and discovered that they have in fact withdrawn from the project. At the time of writing, it appears that the future of several of the remaining seventeen volumes of the Collaborative Edition is, to say the least, uncertain. The matter is important, not least because readers of individual volumes which have already appeared will wish to know how they are to be related to others in the series, and who is now responsible for the overall plan. Meanwhile, the time is ripe for an overview of recent work. Let us begin with volume lo of the Collaborative Edition, entitled The Abingdon Chronicle and edited by Patrick Conner. An immediate caveat is necessary. For centuries now, the B and C texts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle have themselves been known, rightly or wrongly, as The Abingdon Chronicles.2 Readers should not be misled by the title of volume io into the natural assumption that it is an edition of one or both of these texts, for such is not the case. In his preface, Conner admits disarmingly: `The Abingdon Chronicle apparently no longer survives ... it is even possible that there was never a manuscript which contained what I represent here as Abingdon's Chronicle, but only a series of texts which drew in different ways upon material produced at Abingdon at different times'. Quite so. Why, then, the title chosen for his book? To avoid all confusion, it will be referred to here as `Conner's Abingdon Chronicle'. This volume, then, is a reconstruction and edition of a hypothetical text or texts, thought to be precursors to later manuscripts which have survived, but whose provenance and circumstances of composition have yet to be established. As such it represents a radical departure from traditional chronicle studies and it should be assessed accordingly. Is the edition of a phantom text a valid concept? Readers are invited to ponder on this conundrum. The vernacular annals selected for Conner's edition stretch from 956 to ggo and then (after a gap of a quarter of a century) from 1016 to 1066 For the most part these reconstructed annals depend on MS C of the AngloSaxon Chronicle, supplemented where necessary by MSS B, D and E. …