Celtic Britain in the Early Middle Ages. Studies in Scottish and Welsh sources. Studies in Celtic History II.

Aus dem Nachlass von Michael Richter. Mit Namensstempel auf Vorsatz. Etwas wellig, sonst gutes Exemplar. - Inhalt: SCOTLAND: Where are the writings of early Scotland? -- The Book of Deer (Cambridge University Library MS. Ii.6.32) -- Early Christianity in Pictland -- WALES: British Library MS. Cotton Vespasian A.xiv (VitaeSanctorum -- Wallensium) : its purpose and provenance -- The Welsh Latin chronicles: Annales Cambriae and related texts -- The A-text of Annales Cambriae. - This volume contains six studies, three of which are published here for the first time. The book opens with two lectures on Scotland - the Hunter Marshall Lectures for 1977 in the University of Glasgow. The first, 'Where are the writings of early Scotland?' confronts directly and controversially the problem of the acute paucity of surviving native records for early Scottish history; the second, 'The Book of Deer', is an illustrated analysis of one such record, an early Scottish gospel-book, detailed investigation of which tends to confirm some of the more general points made in the preceding study. The Scottish half of the book is rounded off with Dr Hughes's Jarrow Lecture of 1970, 'Early Christianity in Pictland', where she expresses views on the conversion of the Picts to Christianity, which have provoked much subsequent comment on this difficult question. The sources for the ecclesiastical history of Wales inspire the first paper in the Welsh section of the book, a study of the unique twelfth-century collection of Welsh saints' Lives, now in the British Library. The volume concludes with two fundamental studies, one previously unpublished, of the principal source for early Welsh history, the Annales Cambriae; one paper, the Sir John Rhys Memorial lecture to the British Academy in 1973, is a detailed but wide-ranging survey of medieval Welsh annalistic and historical writing, while the other is a comprehensive analysis of the earliest surviving version of this text. At the time of her death in 1977, Dr Kathleen Hughes was Chadwick Reader in Celtic Studies in the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Newnham College. She was the author of two major books on Irish history and of many important articles on different aspects of the medieval Celtic world. Her writing, even on the most technical subjects, was always elegant and lucid, as the papers presented here attest. She is best known for her work on the early Irish Church, the study of which she revolutionised with her first book. The studies of Scotland and Wales in this volume draw on the same fund of wide learning and sharp historical insight. (Verlagstext).