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The Medieval Church · 893
The Life of King Alfred
Asser · d. c. 909
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What it is
A Welsh bishop's account of the king he served, including the illness that plagued him, his late acquisition of Latin, and his reading aloud with his children.
Why it lasted
The only contemporary biography of an Anglo-Saxon king, and the source of nearly everything known about Alfred's character.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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