Literary contributions of King Alfred the Great

        Our understanding of the literary achievements of King Alfred depend very much upon what we believe about his early education. If we are content to accept the stories of Asser, the famous biographer of Alfred, that he reached his twelfth birthday before he learned to read (Keynes 75), then we must reckon his literary career as a phenomenon which can only be described, not explained. Or, if that is not satisfactory, we may compare him in …

…History Of England. Bureau of Electronic Publishing, Inc.,         1992. Fadiman, Clifton, ed. The Little, Brown Book Of Anecdotes. Boston: Little, Brown And         Company, 1985. Keynes, Simon, and Michael Lapidge, Introduction, Notes, and Trans. Alfred The Great:         Asser's Life Of King Alfred And Other Contemporary Sources. Suffolk: The         Chaucer Press, 1983. Smyth, Alfred P. King Alfred The Great. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Stevenson, W. H., ed. Asser's Life of King Alfred 1904. Introd. by D. Whitelock.         Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959.