An English Garner: Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (8 of 8)

This eighth volume of Edward Arber's ambitious Victorian anthology gathers significant English historical texts and literary fragments, preserving voices from centuries past. The collection opens with John Lydgate's powerful poem recounting the Siege of Harfleur and the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, where King Henry V's fierce determination to claim his French inheritance comes alive against the French Dauphin's mockery. Through Lydgate's verses, readers hear the raw fears, hopes, and bravery of English soldiers caught in the chaos of medieval warfare. The anthology spans accounts of battle, fragments of correspondence, and pieces that capture both the chivalry and brutality of English history. Arber's project was monumental: to rescue significant texts from obscurity and make them accessible to a Victorian public hungry for connection to their national past. This volume, like its companions, offers direct access to how English men and women recorded their own history, before historians and academics滤镜med their stories into something more distant. For readers seeking the real texture of England's past, told in the language of those who lived it, this anthology remains a treasure.