Essays on Archaeological Subjects - Wright, Thomas

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Résumé :
Thomas Wright (1810-77), antiquarian, archaeologist and historian, wrote many works on all his areas of interest, including several reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection. He was the first excavator of the Roman city of Wroxeter, wrote on the history of Ludlow and of Cambridge, and was interested in ethnology, folklore, Old English, and etymology. This two-volume collection of his essays was published in 1861: he selected them 'to embrace in some manner the whole field of our own primeval history and that of the Middle Ages'. The subjects range from the excavation of tumuli in Yorkshire to the history of drama in the Middle Ages. Wright draws on sources ranging from medieval charters to modern linguistic studies, as well as the remains and artefacts uncovered by his own and others' excavations. Volume 1 considers prehistoric finds, aspects of Roman Britain, and the Anglo-Saxon and late medieval period....

Biographie:
Wright was born near Ludlow in Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire, to a Quaker family who had formerly lived in Bradford. He attended Ludlow Grammar School before graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1834. While in Cambridge, he contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine and other periodicals, and in 1835 he moved to London to pursue a literary career. In 1842, he was chosen corresponding member of Paris' Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, as well as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a member of numerous other distinguished British and international organizations. In 1859, he oversaw the excavations of the Roman town of Viroconium Cornoviorum (Wroxeter), near Shrewsbury, and produced a report. The Drawing Room Portrait Gallery contains a portrait of him from October 1, 1859. Thomas Edward Bridgett, an English clergyman and historian, commented, It is only when he has to speak of the Catholic Church that he is bitter and unfair.

Sommaire:
1. On the remains of a primitive people in the south-east corner of Yorkshire; 2. On some ancient barrows, or tumuli, opened in East Yorkshire; 3. On some curious forms of sepulchral interment found in East Yorkshire; 4. Treago, and the large tumulus at St Weonard's; 5. On the ethnology of South Britain at the period of the extinction of the Roman government in the island; 6. On the origin of the Welsh; 7. On Anglo-Saxon antiquities, with a particular reference to the Faussett Collection; 8. On the true character of the biographer Asser; 9. Anglo-Saxon architecture, illustrated from illuminated manuscripts; 10. On the literary history of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Britons, and of the Romantic Cycle of King Arthur; 11. On saints' lives and miracles; 12. On antiquarian excavations and researches in the middle ages.