Of the actual facts concerning the origin of English literature, we know little indeed. Nearly all the literary history of the period as far as it concerns the lives of actual writers, is a series of skilful reconstructions based on the texts, fortified by some scanty contemporary references (Such as those of Bede) and topped with a mass of conjecture." The Anglo-Saxon literature is the work of clerks who lived from the seventh to the eleventh century. If they did not create all of it, they preserved it all, it is an essential Christian literature.