Page:The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Giles).djvu/15

Rh annals. But the later portions of MSS. A, C, D and E may all be regarded as contemporary chronicles, and not open to suspicion on chronological grounds. A complete analytical edition in modern English, with corrected dates, is still, and must perhaps remain, a desideratum.

The first printed edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was that by Abraham Wheelock, or Wheloc, Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. His text was compiled from MS. G (not then destroyed), with additions from A, and was accompanied by a Latin translation.

Forty-nine years later a more complete edition, with a Latin translation, was published by Edmund Gibson, of Queen's College, Oxford, afterwards Bishop of London.

The first translation into modern English, based on Gibson's version, was made by Miss Anna Gurney, and privately printed at Norwich in 1819. It was a work of great ability, but its publication was prevented by the appearance in 1823 of a text and English translation by Dr. James Ingram, President of Trinity College, Oxford, who had the advantage of his predecessors in collating all the extant MSS.

The following translation by Dr. Giles appeared in 1847. It was based on the materials prepared under the superintendence of Henry Petrie, formerly Keeper of the Records in the Tower. Dr. Giles also acknowledged his obligations to Miss Gurney's translation, which he used to complete the chronicle, and to Dr. Ingram's account of the various MSS. Mr. Petrie's materials were, in the meantime, used in the compilation of the first volume of Monumenta Historica Britannica, which was published in 1848, and gives a composite text and