The Auchinleck Manuscript

National Library of Scotland Advocates' MS.19.2.1. With an Introduction by Derek Pearsall & I. C. Cunnungham Hardback. Folio. xxiv, facsimile pages unpaginated though many have a handwritten number to upper corner of recto beginnin at 1 and running through to 334. Green cloth binding with contrasting title panel to spine. The Auchinleck MS was presented to the Advocates' Library in 1744 by Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck, the father of Johnson's biographer and a member of the Faculty of Advocates, later to become a judge under the title Lord Auchinleck. At an early date several gatherings, bifolia and leaves were removed. Some were taken for the sake of other miniatures and some had been used as covers for notebooks or, as often happened, in bindings. The Auchinleck MS is one of the most important surviving manuscripts of medieval English poetry, with perhaps only the British Museum's MS Harley 2253 being of comparable significance. The date, range and variety of the Auchinleck MS makes it so significant along with the evidence it offers for English poetry, of book production and readership in the period before Chaucer. On paleographic evidence, the manuscript is assigned to the period 1330 - 1340. There is also a reference within the text to the death of Edward II (d. 1327). The manuscript is one of the earliest (if not the earliest) of those 'libraries' of miscellaneous reading matter. Book in very good condition. Some very light marking to boards and a little soiling to text block edges. One leaf (11th from the end) has some creasing to lower half across the corner. Front paste down has the printed book plate of the late Eric Gerald Stanley (1923 - 2018), who was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. This is a very large and heavy book. No additional shipping costs to UK post codes. If enquiring from overseas please ask for a shipping quote.