ABSTRACT
As has been pointed out above, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the earlier Latin chronicles written in England belong to a specific historiographical type. They are brief annalistic records. Though the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle included historical poems and some passages of excellent narrative, the tradition of creative historical writing was so slender in Anglo-Saxon England after Bede as to be almost non-existent. It is true that historical narrative occurs in the three surviving biographies of Anglo-Saxon kings, De Rebus Gestis Mlfredi (the Life of King Alfred), the Life of King Canute (which goes under the name Encomium Emmae Reginae) and the Vita JEdwardi Regis (the Life of King Edward the Confessor). But none of these works was by an Englishman. A Welshman, Asser, was almost certainly the author of the Life of King Alfred, and the other two Lives were by Flemings. Perhaps, however, it was an Anglo-Saxon who wrote the now lost Life of King Athelstan in Latin verse, parts of which are preserved in William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum Anglorum.
