King Alisaunder

[1][2] It tells the story of Alexander the Great's career from his youth, through his successful campaigns against the Persian king Darius and other adversaries, his discovery of the wonders of the East, and his untimely death.

George Saintsbury described King Alisaunder as "one of the most spirited of the romances", and W. R. J. Barron wrote of its "shrewd mixture of entertainment and edification made appetizing by literary and stylistic devices of unexpected subtlety.

[7] The name of the author is not known, but he or she probably lived in or around London, and he is thought by some to have also written the romances Richard Coer de Lyon, Arthour and Merlin and The Seven Sages of Rome.

[12][13] In 1810 the Anglo-German scholar Henry Weber edited the poem for the first time as part of his Metrical Romances of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries.

G. V. Smithers' Kyng Alisaunder, published by the Early English Text Society as volumes 227 and 237 of their Original Series (1951, 1957), was based on all three manuscripts and on the Bagford Ballads print; it remains the reference edition.