By Floyd Seyward Lear
The Rice Institute Pamphlet, Volume 37, Number 1 (1950)
Introduction: It has long been the accepted practice to begin the broader outline of British history with the Anglo-Saxon period, both in the textbooks and general histories. Although the treatment is frequently all too brief, this difficult epoch is dealt with competently in most of its major aspects despite the relative paucity of the sources. Monographs on the Anglo-Saxon era are fewer than one might suspect, though some of the more recent are notably good, and a few of the older have become almost classic even when modified by subsequent research. Still the primary emphasis has been social, economic, or literary. There are significant studies on parliamentary origins, the beginning of feudalism, the village community, the class structure, and the transmission of the classical and Christian heritages. But in legal history the field is narrowed down markedly save for a few most distinguished contributions, despite the existence of a very considerable body of documentary sources of unusual richness and variety contained in the Anglo-Saxon Dooms.