David Pratt is the author of the novels Todd Sweeney, the Fiend of Fleet High, (Hosta Press) Wallaçonia (Beautiful Dreamer Press), Looking After Joey (Lethe Press) and the Lambda Literary Award-winning Bob the Book (Chelsea Station Editions). David's story collection, My Movie (Chelsea Station) includes new work and short fiction published in Christopher Street, The James White Review, Velvet Mafia, Lodestar Quarterly and other periodicals. Recent anthology publications include Louis Flint Ceci's Not Just Another Pretty Face, Paul Alan Fahey's The Other Man, and Jameson Currier's With.

David directed and performed his work for the theater in New York City at the Cornelia Street Café, HERE Arts Center and Dixon Place, and in the New York International Fringe Festival. More recently, he performed with Michigan artist Nicholas Williams at The Forge in Detroit, Michigan. In the 1980s, David was the first director of plays by acclaimed Canadian playwright John Mighton.

Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; 1. Introduction; Part I. The West Saxon Political Order: 2. Resources and extraction; West Saxon resources and royal power; Military service and the common burdens; 3. Royal lordship and secular office-holding; The king's thegns; The royal household; Gifts and gift-giving; 4. Royal lordship and ecclesiastical office-holding; A new accommodation: royal monasteries and the council of Kingston (838); The southumbrian episcopate and the state of ecclesiastical discipline; Bishops as the 'best king's thegns'; Royal priests in the royal household; Frankish ecclesiastical conditions and Carolingian kingship; 5. The articulation of power under King Alfred's predecessors; Collective office-holding: West Saxon royal devotion; Royal office-holding: the first English coronation order; The uses of literacy?; Sources of textual culture (1) ecclesiastical communities; Sources of textual culture (2) the west Saxon royal household; 6. The impact of the Vikings; Logistics of defence; Lordship and manpower; Land and landholding; Royal income and urban development; Collective security (1) 'king of the Anglo-Saxons'; Collective security (2) 'ruler of all the Christians of the island of Britain'; Part II. Alfredian Discourse and its Efficacy: 7. The field of Alfredian knowledge; Alfredian innovation: Alfredian wisdom and the shift to vernacular prose; Intended audiences and the shift to vernacular literacy; Textual dissemination and the field of Alfredian knowledge; 8. The construction of Alfredian discourse; 'Royal' production: Alfredian discourse and its distinctiveness; Languages of office-holding (1) Georgian language; Languages of office-holding (2) Solomon's dream; The implications of Alfredian discourse; 9. Alfredian technology: books and aedificia; Books and book production; Candle-lantern, 'aestels' and the Fuller brooch; 10. The Hierdeboc as a treatise of power; Language and context; The origin and purpose of power; The active and contemplative lives; The hierdeboc and the southumbrian episcopate; 11. The Domboc as a Reorientation of royal law; Written law: authority and status; The construction of Alfredian judgement; The historical projection of secular law; The defence of lordship; The Domboc in practice; 12. Tribulation and triumph in the first fifty psalms; Apparatus and voice; God, rihtwisnes and sinful enemies; Royal hardships and divine justice; Alfred's psalms and Alfredian theatre; 13. The search for a satisfactory consolation; The consolatio philosophiae in context; Royal translation and Carolingian expertise; Alfredian adaption: mind, wisdom and the 'wordly blessings'; Craeft, tools and resources; Wyrd and divine justice; The Froferboc and Alfredian theatre; 14. Seeing God as he is; The Soliloquia in context; Royal translation and Carolingian expertise; Alfredian adaption: wisdom and the sight of God; Lordship and authority; Alfred's soliloquies and Alfredian theatre; 15. Conclusion; Appendix: West Frankish deployment of Solomon's dream; Bibliography; Index.