After the end of the common stock annals c.892 we can more accurately refer to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles in the plural, as the work of many authors, revisers and scribes working in many different places across the following two-and-a-half centuries. The evidence of the surviving OE versions and other witnesses points to a pattern of dispersal, divergence and at times neglect of the annals across the following century, beside recurrent contact between the developing Chronicle texts. In various places, especially in relation to annals across the second half of the tenth century, points of contact provide evidence for the retrospective work of eleventh-century chronicle making.

This chapter explores the authoring and compilation the Chronicles across the tenth century, beginning with the annals of the so-called ‘First Continuation’ (893–96). This group of annals, authored c.900, takes up the story of the viking army that appeared in Wessex in 892 and is shared by ABC, but is also found in D as the result of a collation of a Northern Recension text with a *BC-type Chronicle. Other witnesses – the E Chronicle, the Mercian Register, Æthelweard's Chronicon and St Neots – present varying patterns of convergence and difference at this point, signalling a dispersal of copies of the common stock annals from the 890s. A, B and C continue to share annals as far as 914, after which A and *BC part company. A continues the annals of the reign of Edward the Elder as far as 920, after which this manuscript was neglected for some decades, until a revival of interest at Winchester in the middle of the tenth century.