The body of the book provides the prefaces, prologues, introductions or forewords chronologically, each headed with its title, and the year in very large numerals, with commentary by Gray and thirty other writers (including Angus Calder, Alan Spence, Robert Crawford, Bruce Leeming, and Paul Henderson Scott)[1] in small red italic text in a column to the outer side of the leaf as needed to discuss the document.

Of the reviews cited on the back cover of the paperback version, the Palo Alto Daily News comments that "The diversity of the selection is staggering.

The survey ends with this latter date to avoid the expense of copyright royalties, but the book's more than six hundred pages still provide a cornucopia of material.

[3]Nicholas Lezard begins by remarking on the omission of Thomas Dekker, but continues: Gray has compiled an anthology of English prose from Cædmon (c 675) to Wilfred Owen, his agenda being not only to track the development of the language but, it would seem, the progress of humanism.

In case you think that you don't have enough secondary information about Alfred (or anyone else for that matter), Gray has supplied marginal glosses in red which, over the course of his book, comprise a succinct political and literary history of these islands.These brief essays are quirky, adept and useful; his parallel translations of early English are more than competent, and send you back over the page to the originals with confidence.

Sansom adds, "Unconsidered trifles include John Clare's unstopped intro to "The Parish" (1827) - 'THIS POEM was begun & finished under the pressure of heavy distress with embittered feelings under a state of anxiety and oppression almost amounting to slavery'.