The Matter of Britain

1,740 pages, 640,000 words, The Matter of Britain is a major reference work, a compilation of all mentions of Britain up to 650 CE.

I had begun to write a series of novels about Salisbury. (I’m still working on it.) One of the characters was an archaeologist with an interest in Roman Britain. I wanted him to know more than you’d find in the usual history books. He had to be an expert who could quote all the original information written by ancient Romans at the time.

I assumed there would be a reference web page, but I could find nothing. All the information was on the internet of course, but spread across hundreds of sites, and it took some finding. That’s when I thought of collecting it together myself and putting it all in date order on my personal web site http://edwinhopper.com.

This collection proved useful to historians and students round the world with about 20 downloads a day. An early version is held on the Oxford University woruldhord web site at http://poppy.nsms.ox.ac.uk/woruldhord/contributions/120 and several other sites like Yampu have distributed their own copies. I have only included material about Britain before 650 AD. After this date, the Victoria County Histories cover local areas in much more detail.

I have not written or translated any of the contents. I have merely tracked down documents freely available on the internet and extracted and edited parts that refer to Britain and the surrounding territories, and as such these files are free to download and use as you like. The bibliography contains all the authors and translators who did the real work and the web sites where I found them.

Downloads

Complete Matter of Britain. Incudes all sections and bibliography with navigation from contents page