The pages that follow convey and comment on works by Ælfric of Eynsham, the most prolific, erudite, and influential author writing in English before Chaucer. The principal aim of this edition is to edit, translate, and comment on fifteen homilies and nine shorter texts arguably written by Ælfric that do not appear in the editions of his work by Peter Clemoes (Catholic Homilies: The First Series), Malcom Godden (Catholic Homilies: The Second Series), John Pope (Supplemental Homilies), Mary Clayton and Janet Mullins (Lives of Saints [formerly edited by W. W. Skeat]), Susan Irvine (Homilies from Bodley 343), and Samuel Crawford (Hexameron). Among the homilies edited below, nine, to our knowledge, appear in print for the first time. Six belong to the Proper of the Season: two for Christmas (one Latin, AH I.1, and one vernacular, I.2), two for Lent (AH I.3 in three versions and I.4), and two for Easter (AH I.5–6). The homilies for Mary's Assumption and Nativity (AH I.7–8) belong to the Proper of the Saints, and those for the feast-day of a confessor (AH II.9) and the dedication of a church (AH II.10) to the Common of the Saints. The remaining five are for unspecified occasions (AH II.11–15). Multiple versions of AH I.3 (three versions) and II.12 (two versions) bring the number of Ælfrician homilies edited to nineteen.

Fifteen of the homilies are, or almost certainly are, by Ælfric. Four others might be. And in view of such certainties, near certainties, and clear uncertainties, we thus use ‘Ælfrician’ in the title to characterize the works edited here. Although Ælfric composed the component parts of AH I.6–7 and II.13, we cannot say for certain that he was responsible for compiling the whole of these three composite homilies. The fourth homily is a third version of his homily on the raising of Lazarus (AH I.3 [Lazarus III]). If Lazarus III is not by Ælfric, then it is at least ultimately and demonstrably connected to him and ‘attests to dynamic, fluid processes of composition, revision, and amalgamation both by [him] and others’. Other homilies edited below bear witness to his personal involvement in such processes.