Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is episode 57, The Wessex Literary Revival.

In this episode, we're going to move the story of English forward to the second half of

the 10th century.

With the defeat of the Vikings in York, the Anglo-Saxons were now permanently unified,

and that unification was accompanied by a brief law in the Viking invasions.

That meant there was an extended period of peace and prosperity.

It also led to a revival of the monasteries, and that monastic revival led to the last

great period of Old English literature.

So this time, we'll explore this massive literary revival.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is history of

Englishpodcast.com, and you can always reach me directly at Kevin at historyofenglishpodcast.com.

Also, I want to give you a quick update on the transcripts for the old episodes.

Originally, I planned to release those as basic PDF files, but several listeners suggested

a proper ebook format, which would be available on Kindle and iPad.

So that's what I'm working on.

I'm going to bundle the transcripts together and make them available on those platforms.

And that's why it's taking a little longer than I had anticipated.

But I'll be sure to make an announcement when they're ready for those of you who've requested

a written version of the material in the podcast.

So with that piece of business out of the way, let's turn to this episode, and let's

return to the actual history on the ground in England in the mid-900s.

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