Alan Orr Anderson

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Alan Orr Anderson ( 1879 - December 9, 1958 ) was a Scottish historian and compiler .

He was the son of Rev. John Anderson and Ann Masson. He received his education at the Royal High School (Edinburgh) and the University of Edinburgh . After five years of work funded by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust , he published Scottish Annals of English Chroniclers in 1908 , a relatively comprehensive collection of sources on Scottish history prior to 1286, written either in England or by English-born chroniclers. Fourteen years later he was able to publish the two-volume work "Early Sources of Scottish History, AD 500 to 1286", a similar but larger collection of sources, this time from non-English sources (mostly Gaelic material). To some extent, the latter work overlapped with the compilations in William Forbes Skene 's Chronicles of Picts and Scots (Edinburgh, 1867), but both of Anderson's compilations differed from Skene in that everything was translated into English.

Years of reading difficult manuscripts in low light were probably the cause of Anderson's poor eyesight, so that for a long time he had to rely on his doctoral student and later wife Marjorie Ogilvie Cunningham .

Even today, most of the scholars engaged in early Scottish history consider Anderson's three volumes to be one of their most important scientific tools. As a result, much of the course of early Scottish historiography was determined by what Anderson either published or not published. In 1990 and 1991 the compilations were reissued by Paul Watkins Publishing, the Stamford, Lincolnshire based organization.

Works

  • Early Sources of Scottish History: AD 500-1286 , 2 volumes, Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1922; republished, Marjorie Anderson (Ed.) Stamford, 1990
  • Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers: AD 500-1286 , London: David Nutt, 1908; republished, Marjorie Anderson (Ed.) Stamford, 1991

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