Editing Ælfric's Catholic Homilies

Patrick Conner's witty but perhaps unwise comments appeared five years ago, just after the publication of the first new edition for 150 years of the earliest body of work by the best exemplified writer of the Anglo-Saxon period. Given that there are so many surviving manuscript copies, anyone attempting to edit the First Series of Ælfric's Catholic Homilies would have to be of giant stamina if not stature. This essay looks at how far Peter Clemoes's edition, together with the commentary and glossary volume by Malcolm Godden which completes the three-volume set of the Catholic Homilies, fulfils the needs of twenty-first-century readers, and whether indeed the days of editorial giants are over. © Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH, Tübingen 2003.