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A print of Siliceus's Arithmetica (Paris 1526), once preserved in the Landesbibliothek in Kassel, but now lost, contained a fragment of one parchment leaf until it was removed in 1904. The text, vaguely identified by Wiedemann (1994) as a "Vita Thomae Beket", is here more precisely identified as part of the "Life of St. Thomas of Canterbury" from an early South English Legendary. I describe fragment and text in detail, and the text is analysed with respect to dialect and to its position in the transmission history. A diplomatic edition of the text preserved in this fragment makes this early witness of an important Middle English legendary available for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Coventry’s central library was destroyed in 1940, valuable early guild records were lost. No consensus has emerged regarding which records were lost during the war and which records had been lost earlier. Identifying these losses is important because Coventry’s records hold value for the city’s history and - since Coventry was a key site for early theatre — for Britain’s literary history. As this article shows, fewer historical manuscripts were destroyed in 1940 than was once feared. Moreover, the loss of one of these manuscripts is mitigated somewhat by new evidence presented here, which suggests that some of the manuscript’s source material survives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a writer so disparaging about magic, Chaucer's understanding of occult practice seems to have been considerable. In the Squire's Tale, magic objects drive the (truncated) plot. For the Canon's Yeoman's Tale, Chaucer consulted alchemical works to construct his story. And in the Franklin's Tale, Chaucer's vivid depictions of illusions reflect his broad knowledge of magical practice. These tales include learned references to alchemy, astral prayer, astrology (regarded, to some extent, as a science in Chaucer's day), automata, and clerical magic, as are explored here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers those manuscripts that either are or include collections of Middle English verse romances. They form a small proportion, no more than eleven manuscripts, of the romance manuscripts that survive. The article seeks to assess the factors involved in the creation of these collections and to place them in the wider contexts of surviving manuscripts that include verse romances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christian devotion often focused on holy measurements such as those of Christ's height, side wound, and the nails that pierced him. This article focuses on ones occurring in English manuscripts, primarily from the late fourteenth to the mid‐sixteenth century. The devout touched, kissed, beheld, and wore these measures, drawn scaled or life‐sized, in expectation of protections in life or indulgences after death. These metric relics are considered in light of the mathematics of medieval measurement, which essentially comprised laying one body against another to deliver some kind of ratio or relation. None of the textual amulets delivers a discrete statistic but instead requires a gauging operation, such as multiplying a length fifteen times, thereby placing the worshipper in the position of measurer. By imaginatively measuring the wounds and nails, as if present at the Passion, the votaries interrogate even as they touch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights the textual distinctiveness of the Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt in its manuscript context in British Library, Cotton Julius E.vii. The Cotton Julius version of the Life is distinctive in the sheer number of scribal errors it contains but also in the purposeful changes to the original translation evident in it. Consideration of scribal performance across the manuscript and comparison with texts of Saint Mary of Egypt extant elsewhere lead to the conclusion that the purposeful changes in the Cotton Julius witness have probably been inherited from an exemplar, while the number of errors is likely due to the pressure under which the scribe was working in adding this text at a late stage of the manuscript's composition. Despite its distinctive features, there is no evidence to contradict the recently argued contention that this version of Saint Mary of Egypt, along with the second half of the immediately preceding item in the manuscript, the Legend of the Seven Sleepers, was copied by the main scribe of Cotton Julius rather than being delegated to a colleague: although Seven Sleepers also seems to have been copied under pressure, Saint Mary of Egypt stands apart from it in broadly the same ways as it does from the rest of the manuscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reassessment of the Old English glosses in Cambridge, Trinity College, B.10.5, as well as a presentation of three new glosses found in another fragment of the same manuscript, now London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius C.viii, with special focus on their language and function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I offer a brief history of manuscript cataloguing and some observations on the innovations this practice introduced especially in the digital form. This history reveals that as the cataloguing of medieval manuscripts developed over time, so did the research needs it served. What was often considered traditional cataloguing practices had to be mediated to accommodate new scholarly advance, posing interesting questions, for example, on what new technologies can bring to this discussion. In the digital age, in particular, how do digital catalogues interact with their analogue counterparts? What skills and training are required of scholars interacting with this new technology? To this end, I will consider the importance of the digital environment to enable a more flexible approach to cataloguing. I will also discuss new insights into digital projects, especially the experience accrued by the The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220 Project, and then propose that in the future cataloguing should be adaptable and shareable, and make full use of the different approaches to manuscripts generated by collaboration between scholars and librarians or the work of postgraduate students and early career researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the interpretation of the scribal formula "quod þ personal name" commonly found in colophons of late medieval English manuscripts. The author challenges the prevailing notion that "quod" should be read as the Middle English equivalent of "quoth" and argues for an alternative Latin reading of "quod" within the formula. The article highlights the importance of considering Latin influences and potential for interpretations in the context of late medieval vernacular texts.

A distinctive Ottoman voice was near-ubiquitous in late Elizabethan England, appearing in books and on stages with remarkable regularity. This essay questions the dominant assumption that such a voice emerges, fully formed, in the first part of Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great (1587). Turning to largely unknown Henrician sources in print and manuscript—in particular a letter from the Emperor of Babylon to Henry VIII—it argues for the importance of a continental Sultansbriefe ("Letters of the Sultan") genre in which fictional letters from various Eastern potentates to Christian monarchs and the pope circulated widely. Such letters took on new forms in English contexts and reveal the different registers that voice could occupy: they could be read as satire, as travel accounts, or as news, and might be belligerent, bombastic, heroic, or pathetic. They offer a means to defamiliarize the standard "Turkish" voice of the end of the sixteenth century and show it to be a late and productive reinvention of an earlier Sultansbriefe tradition. [M.D.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An otiose stroke in scribal practice is a mark whose linguistic signification is obscure—yet such strokes abound as calligraphic additions to certain letters in English manuscripts of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. This article seeks an explanation for the deployment of certain apparently otiose strokes, whose careful and persistent execution suggests a deliberate purpose in deployment. The vernacular production of the Carthusian scribe William Darker (working c.1481–1512) is chosen as an exemplum, and four common strokes in his work whose function is deemed ambiguous are examined in detail. Statistical and contextual analysis of the deployment of these strokes reveals semantic behaviours and patterns of use that suggest the marks had significant meaning for the scribe: though they do not necessarily function as abbreviations, they appear to bear linguistic meaning, and act with some consistency as signals of vowel length, pronunciation, and morphology. While these 'otiose' strokes remain resistant to full explication, the patterns here uncovered suggest a scribal intention to encode linguistic information via the conscious placement of calligraphic marks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merchant's marks were symbols used by merchants and traders from the early middle ages to the seventeenth century. They functioned as nonverbal signatures in trade networks, and in later centuries as quasiheraldic emblems for wealthy mercantile families. They are common in medieval architecture, and were widely studied in this context by nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century scholars. Their presence in books is more difficult to trace, and often crosses period boundaries as owners inscribed books acquired second hand. This article reveals a previously unexplored history of Tudor merchant's marks entered into medieval manuscript books. A number of sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century merchants acquired luxury copies of literary texts produced in the fifteenth century, often circulating, gifting, or bequeathing them to others. Merchant's marks functioned as symbols of professional identity in these practices of ownership and exchange. The article considers the implications of this self‐fashioning for our understanding of early modern book use, demonstrating how the ownership and social function of a book might have been detached from its contents, reflecting instead its aesthetic value, or the space it offered for memorialisation or recordkeeping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article presents a contrastive analysis of late medieval medical recipes in English and Castilian in order to find out analogies and differences in both languages. To this end, a corpus of medical recipes dating from the 14th and 15th centuries in English and a parallel one in Castilian have been compiled so that recipes can be compared to check to which extent they follow the usual structural pattern of the genre and the linguistic forms associated to this type of texts. It is a pioneering study, as recipes are usually explored in a single language. The findings reveal that many structural and textual aspects are present in both languages. This can be explained due to the fact that medical recipes come from the same classical sources. Nevertheless, divergences are also observed. In fact, in terms of contents, the examination of the ingredients section shows a clear tendency to adapt the recipe ingredients to make use of those elements which are available in the geographical region where the document was produced.

The article discusses the possibility that the manuscript (MS) Ff.6.33 in the Cambridge University Library in Cambridge, England derived from 15th century and early 16th century nuns at the Syon Abbey in Middlesex, England. An overview of the Syon Abbey's status as a Christian pilgrimage site, including a Syon badge's depicting Saint Bridget of Sweden, is provided.

The author presents a criticism of the play "The House of Aspen" by Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. He mentions the manuscript of the play at the National Library of Scotland, the dating of the manuscript, and the influence of German drama on the play.

This paper focuses on an edition with English translation and commentary of an excerpt from the Syntagma Laurentianum, the astrological miscellany contained in the 11thcentury manuscript Laur. Plut. 28.34, systematically applying techniques of horoscopic astrology to the determination of the possibility, intensity, and time of rain through the year. The heading shows an attribution to "a certain Syrian" (Σύρος τις), which I claim should probably be interpreted as a misleading scribal correction of the name Σύρος. The name probably indicates servile origin from Syria, and the Greek text may indeed show interferences with Aramaic dialects. In an appendix, I discuss the possibility that the author was identical with the dedicatee of half of Claudius Ptolemy's treatises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents discussion of the discipline and methodology of historical scholarship and research as of 2009 and reflects on possible changes which could occur within the field in the following 40 years. Particular focus is given to the development of English Renaissance manuscript studies. Details are given outlining the importance of archival analysis in historical scholarship and the primary outcomes of such research are profiled. It is suggested that in the future it will not be new methodologies, but new sources which will be discovered through the continuation of 21st-century research trends.

The author discusses the lives of English authors and headmasters Alexander Gil the Elder and Alexander Gil the Younger. He mentions their literary works and collections of manuscripts, their donations of books to libraries at Oxford University, and presents several appendices listing the manuscripts and donations.

A literary criticism of the text of an English prophecy is presented. The author discusses the prophecy's appearance in a Bodleian Library manuscript, its text being forwarded by astrologist Robert Sterrell to propagandist William Lilly, and a duplicate text found in another manuscript.

A literary criticism of the English play "The Twice Chang'd Friar" by John Newdigate is presented. The author discusses the playwright's background, the use of allusions referencing contemporary persons and politics, and the anti-Catholic satire as presented in the treatment of the friar.

This essay examines the phenomenon of rare or unique poems found in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century manuscript collections, positioning them within the familial, collegial, or coterie environments within and for which they were written. These include verses composed by compilers, politically dangerous or obscene texts, and texts related to scandals or topical events of local interest. These poems rarely feature in literary surveys, but they open a unique window onto early modern society and its mores, and indicate the social breadth, depth, and extent of literary composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article focuses on the book "Treatise on the Astrolabe," by Geoffrey Chaucer. Topics discussed include the possible inspiration behind the quoted philosopher present in the book, Chaucer's source for the quotation being a Latin medical treatise, the "Practica brevis," attributed to Johannes Platearius, and several British manuscript witnesses of the "Practica brevis" dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth century.

The article discusses a manuscript of an English translation of the Latin work "Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio" ("Defensio" or "First Defence") by author John Milton. Topics include the relation of lawyer Thomas Margetts to the manuscript as translator, the translations of idioms from Latin into English, and comparisons to a 1991 translation by translator Claire Gruzelier.

Folger MS V.a.345 is an early seventeenth-century English manuscript of about 500 poems, with some additional prose pieces. It is one of the largest surviving manuscript anthologies from the period, drawing its contents from both manuscript and print sources, pointing to the two-way traffic between the two systems of literary transmission. Compiled by someone with Oxford (probably Christ Church) connections, it has not only an unusual number of pieces from printed volumes from the period, especially from books of epigrams, but also a very large number of apparently unique copies of poems that do not appear in any other surviving manuscript or print documents. Reflecting the collecting habits of well-educated gentlemen, who carried over from their university years into their later (typically metropolitan) careers a taste for witty verse and prose that were marks of social distinction as well as of political interests, this collection, like some other contemporary large anthologies which incorporate texts from a field of writing larger than that defined by traditional literary history, engaged in anthologizing practices that were imitated in print culture from the 1640s through the Restoration period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the advice for fertility and health care contained in a late fifteenth-century manuscript: London, British Library MS Lansdowne 380. This study has chosen to engage with the larger theme of whether women had access to medical writings in the vernaculars of later-medieval England and whether this enabled them to control their own fertility. The paper shows that many women did have direct access to written knowledge, and that this knowledge combined theoretical and practical understanding for use in a domestic setting. Rather than being disenfranchised from responsibility for their own fertility, women collaborated with their husbands to ensure offspring and the future of their families. By refining the understanding of the use of manuscripts, the source of the knowledge they contained, and the question of ownership, the paper adds to our awareness of the scope and practice of fertility medicine in the later Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses records of uncollected message from Charles Dickens in which he donated five contiguous slips of "The Pickwick Papers" manuscript to a charitable cause in 1840. The message indicates that Dickens became increasingly aware of the value of the manuscripts as his fame increased. According to the article, the donation was a happy circumstance because it contributed to the preservation of his manuscript which would later be acquired by the Rosenbach Museum and Library.

An essay is presented on the Digital Resource and Database for Palaeography, Manuscripts and Diplomatic (DigiPal) project for identification and classification of European scripts. The topics discussed include the need for the project, study of English Vernacular Minuscule and ancient scripts such as Scandinavian and Sephardic. It mentions that the project focuses on providing transparency in the system of palaeography and thus enhance the credibility of the discipline.

The article presents a study of the draft manuscript "Antiquities of Warwickshire" by scholar Sir William Dugdale which contains references to playwright William Shakespeare. Topics discussed include a description of the manuscript, an assessment on the corrections made by the scholar regarding his opinion on Shakespeare, and the author's description of the monument sketches included by Dugdale in the manuscript.

The article discusses a new manuscript of John Peyton's "A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Provinces United With That Crowne, Anno 1598." Topics discussed include the presumed authors of the late-sixteenth-century English account of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which was purchased by bookseller Jacques Rosenthal. Also discussed is the challenge of establishing a definitive composition date for Peyton's original account of Poland.

The article discusses the Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 656 manuscript collection. Topics discussed include author S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson's book "The Index of Middle English Prose", the works "The Siege of Jerusalem" and the C version of "Piers Plowman" contained in the manuscripts and London, British Library, Harley MS 2343, a collection of catechetic texts in the vernacular that contains both the "Exposition on the Creed" and Decem mandata in sequence.

The article discusses the history of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 740 and New York, Public Library, MS Spencer 19 manuscripts. Topics discussed include death of Sir Thomas Cumberworth, sheriff of Lincolnshire, England, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 740 as a copy of "The Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode" book and New York, Public Library, MS Spencer 19 as a copy of "The Pilgrimage of the Soul" and antagonism that characterizes the relationship between them.

An essay is presented on manuscripts and early printed books along with the size of the book. Topics discussed include Middle English production standards, Prick of Conscience manuscripts that are devoted to double-column short-line poetry and study by author J. P. Gumbert which shows the ratio of a book's height to its width has tended toward a constant.

The anonymous A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Provinces United with that Crowne, Anno 1598 is the most important early account of Poland written in English. Over the last one hundred years, the work has received considerable attention from British, German, and Polish historians. Two different authors have been proposed, George Carew (c.1556–1612) and William Bruce (c.1560–after 1613), but neither attribution has gone unchallenged. This article is based on a fresh examination of what was long thought to be the only manuscript of this work, British Library Royal MS 18 B I, which makes it possible to determine the date and the circumstances of its production. Following a thorough analysis of the handwriting in the manuscript and the discovery of the watermark, it is now possible to point to the provenance of the manuscript and its components. This new information, in turn, leads to a reassessment of the historical context commonly assigned to A Relation of the State of Polonia. With the help of significant new evidence and formerly overlooked auction catalogues, the author can now be identified as John Peyton (1579–1635). The manuscript itself, I argue, was produced for King James VI and I at the time of his arrival in London in May 1603. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"Upon the Hurricane" is one of relatively few poems by Anne Finch to survive in several states of authorial revision. A response to the Great Storm of November 1703, it is also one of the first poems she is known to have written following the death of James II in September 1701. This article compares the early manuscript and print versions of the poem, reading them for evidence both of Finch's practice as a poet and a reviser and of her complex political and emotional response to James's death. "Upon the Hurricane" follows Jacobite orthodoxy in seeing the widespread destruction caused by the storm as confirmation of the nation's perfidy in rebelling against its rightful king. It also indicates the limits of Finch's Jacobitism through its failure to look to James's son and heir for political redemption and its insistence that safety can only be found in God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how Mary Wroth's Urania is positioned at the intersection of manuscript and print cultures. While part 1 of the romance offers a literary representation of manuscript culture; Wroth, significantly, chose to print her romance. Wroth's choice reflects her ambivalent relationship with her literary circle and may have allowed her both to critique her coterie audience and to seek an audience who would read her romance for its literary merit rather than to "decipher" it for personal information. Though critics have suggested that part 1 of the Urania offers a largely positive portrayal of a welcoming coterie audience for Pamphilia's verse, its portrayal of the coterie is much more complicated, particularly because the coterie's attempts to decipher Pamphilia's verse push her to create ever-more indecipherable poetry. The article concludes with a discussion of readers' handwritten endings to the printed Urania, which complicate the relationship between reader and writer, as well as between manuscript and print. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential benefits of analysing graphetic variation for philological and textual research on manuscript material. For this pilot study, two gatherings from two mid-sixteenth-century English manuscripts were analysed. The gatherings share some of their texts and are written by the same scribe. According to a set of five criteria defined in this paper, variation in word-final forms was selected as an example of graphetic variation. The distribution of two variant forms of word-final was studied in order to locate possible changes in preference. The results show that analysing the distribution of graphetic variants may reveal discontinuities in textual production, for example where one scribal stint ends and another begins. Together with codicological and textual evidence, an analysis of graphetic variation can be helpful in determining the textual structure of manuscripts and establishing the chronological sequence of manuscript production. The method can also be used for the purposes of palaeography, especially scribal identification. The approach could be further tested in order to determine which graphemes and other visual features are suitable for such an analysis and to form a diagnostic set of those features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]