C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Alfred the Great (849–899)
Alfred the Great. King of the West Saxons; born at Wantage, in 849; died on Oct. 26, 899. Alfred placed at the disposal of his people the best that was current in the Latin literature of the time. With the assistance of scholars assembled from all sides he translated into the West Saxon dialect Boethius’s ‘Consolation of Philosophy’; St. Augustine’s ‘Soliloquies’; Gregory the Great’s ‘Pastoral Care’; Orosius’s ‘History of the World’; Bede’s ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People.’ He supplied a preface to Bishop Werferth’s translation of Gregory’s ‘Dialogues’ and reorganized the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).