In the early 1980s, James E. Cross approached Paul Szarmach and Thomas D. Hill to create (as Szarmach related in the “Foreword” to Trial Version) “a collaborative project that aims to produce a reference work summarizing current scholarship concerning the knowledge and use of literary sources in Anglo-Saxon England. Departing from J. D. A. Ogilvy’s Books Known to the English, 597–1066 and incorporating more recent scholarship, …[the project] will include contributions from specialists in the various sub-fields of Old English studies.” Much of the foundational work of the project was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1987-89.
Over the years, the project has evolved to incorporate more members, to publish print volumes and related resources, as well as, more recently, to move toward digital dissemination of contributions. Most momentously, Frederick M. Biggs spearheaded a shift toward a new model in the 2010s. Originally conceived of as a traditional encyclopedic resource, with entries published from A to Z, the potential of online research platforms has shifted the project’s publication model. In 2020, the project was relaunched online with a new name, the Sources of Old English and Anglo-Latin Literary Culture (SOEALLC), on this site hosted by Humanities Commons.
Major overarching objectives of SOEALLC include: 1) commissioning, editing, and publishing scholarly entries about authors and works known in early England; 2) implementing open-access online publication of all finished entries as a public resource; and 3) creating a database of searchable and usable data gleaned from entries completed by contributors. Print volumes will be published with Amsterdam University Press, while other entries will be published online via the Humanities Commons Core Repository.
Accounts of the origins and aims of the SOEALLC project as it was conceived can be found in the various prefaces and forewords to published volumes: see Paul E. Szarmach, “Foreword,” Trial Version, ed. Biggs, Hill, and Szarmach, vii–xiii; and, in the same volume, Thomas D. Hill, “Introduction,” pp. xv–xxix; and Frederick M. Biggs, “Guide for Readers,” pp. xxxi–xli.
Publications related to the project have included the following:
Symposium on the Sources of Anglo-Saxon Culture
Sources of Anglo-Saxon Culture, ed. Paul E. Szarmach, with the assistance of Virginia Darrow Oggins, Studies in Medieval Culture 20 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1986) [Essays presented at the 18th ICMS, Kalamazoo, MI, 1983]
Entries: Print Publications
Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: A Trial Version, ed. Frederick M. Biggs, Thomas D. Hill, and Paul E. Szarmach, with the assistance of Karen Hammond, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 74 (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1990)
Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, Volume 1: Abbo of Fleury, Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and Acta Sanctorum, ed. Frederick M. Biggs, Thomas D. Hill, Paul E. Szarmach, and E. Gordon Whatley, with the assistance of Deborah A. Oosterhouse, Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture 1 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001)
Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: The Apocrypha, ed. Frederick M. Biggs, Instrumenta Anglistica Mediaevalia 1 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007)
George Hardin Brown and Frederick M. Biggs, Bede: Part 1 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017)
George Hardin Brown and Frederick M. Biggs, Bede: Part 2 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018)
Old English Newsletter Subsidia
The Liturgical Books of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Richard W. Pfaff, Old English Newsletter Subsidia 23 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995)
Ambrose in Anglo-Saxon England, with Pseudo-Ambrose and Ambrosiaster, ed. Dabney Anderson Bankert, Jessica Wegmann, and Charles D. Wright, Old English Newsletter Subsidia 25 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997)
Pamphlets compiled for use with Fontes Anglo-Saxonici and SOEALLC
Michael Lapidge, Abbreviations for Sources and Specifications of Standard Editions for Sources (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1988)
Janet Bately, Anonymous Old English Homilies: A Preliminary Bibliography of Source Studies (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1993)