SOURCE: Anna Comnena: A Study, Oxford University Press, 1929, 558 p.

In the following excerpt, Buckler summarizes the Alexiad, particularly with regard to Anna's personality and tendency towards self-pity and her access to sources. Buckler proclaims that Anna is an engaging writer.

General Remarks

It is a well-accepted fact that Byzantine history has never, till within the last forty or fifty years, received at the hand of historians either adequate or just treatment. When Oman wrote his Byzantine Empire in 1892 for the Story of the Nations series, he thought it necessary to state that he was endeavouring 'to tell the story of Byzantium in the spirit of Finlay and Bury, not in that of Gibbon'. It is indeed to Gibbon's scorn of the Eastern Empire and all its works, as outlined in Chapter XL VIII of his Decline and Fall, that most English readers owe their knowledge, or rather ignorance...