The Exeter Book (a.k.a. Codex Exoniensis or Liber Exoniensis) Information taken from The Exeter Book, ed G.P. Krapp and E. van K. Dobbie (Anglo Saxon Poetic Records 3, New York, 1936), pp.viv-xxi.

• Largest of the four great collections of Old English poetry
• So-called because it is preserved in the library of Exeter Cathedral
• Gift to the Cathedral from Leofric, first bishop of Exeter (d. 1072)
• Probably written ca. 960-980, but its provenance and authorship remain unknown Scholars have suggested that the scribal hand indicates the MS was copied in the West Country, possibly at Crediton, Devon (near Exeter), former bishop’s seat
• Folios (pages) are approximately 12.5 in. by 8.6 in.
• All the poems are written in a single hand
• No illustrations or ornamentation
• MS might have been used as a cutting board at some point in its history (knife strokes on its original first page)
• Poems in the MS have no titles
• Beginning of each poem or section within a poem has large initial capital letters and small capitals on all or part of the remainder of that line
• Very few abbreviations appear in the MS
• Little punctuation except at the end of poems and the points used, possibly, for metrical punctuation

"The Wanderer," poem #6 in the MS (Krapp and Dobbie, pp. xxxvii-xxxviii.)

• Title comes from lines 1 and 6 within the poem--a solitary dweller, man alone ("anhaga"), an earth-walker ("eardstapa")
• Subject is the exile and desolation of a lordless man
• Poem seems to have two major parts--lines 1-57, which are a personal examination of the elegiac theme and the speaker’s loss, and lines 58-110, which are a more general examination of the elegiac theme of separation--The second part seems to apply the lessons of the first part, but the speaker may change.
• An elegy for the lost lord and lost hall-life, emphasizing the transitory nature of life’s joys
• Some critics have read the poem as an allegory for the Christian’s state in this world as an exile from God, but no other such Christian allegories exist in the corpus of A-S poetry.
• Most readers now accept that the poems two parts were written together and work together, possibly as a moralizing statement on how futile it is to cling to transitory, earthly pleasures and earthly reward.

"The Wife’s Lament," poem #16, though it follows group one of the riddles (Krapp and Dobbie, pp. lvii-lix.)

• Often seen as paired with the later poem "The Husband’s Message"
• Dramatic soliloquy spoken by a woman (grammar indicates this gender)--a lament for the woman’s separation from her husband (lover?) and her husband’s hostility toward her
• Gnomic wisdom appears at line 42ff.

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The Riddles, 95 riddles appear in three groups

• Probably the work of a number of authors
• Some are influenced by the Latin tradition of Aldhelm’s riddles.
• Circumstances under which the riddles came to be collected in the Exeter Book are unclear
• Impossible to assign a date of composition, but some probably date to the early 8th century