Kari Anne Rand – författare

`The Index of Middle English Prose when completed will be a monumental achievement' REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIESTwo very different collections are surveyed in this volume. The manuscripts of Pembroke College, Cambridge are typical of a medieval foundation. Its core of books is a working library of that period, representing the interests andneeds of its Fellows, very often given or bequeathed by them to the College. The collection was substantially enlarged in 1599 through the gift by William Smart of Ipswich of a large number of manuscripts which until the Reformation had belonged to the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. By contrast the emphasis of the Fitzwilliam Museum collection is to a great extent art historical. At its heart are the manuscripts bequeathed by Lord Fitzwilliam in 1816. These were supplemented throughout the 19th century by a series of gifts and bequests, culminating in 1904 in the largest bequest to date, from Frank McClean, of some 203 manuscripts.In spite of the different character of the two collections, both contain a range of Middle English prose items, among them Chaucer's Boece, a complete Wycliffite sermon cycle and several Paston letters [all from Pembroke], the Anlaby Cartulary, the "Canutus" pestilence tract, the Brut, Lydgate's Serpent of Division and Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ (from the Fitzwilliam).KARI ANNE RAND is Professor of Older English Literature at the University of Oslo.

Handlist to the rich collection of manuscripts contained in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, with full indices.The majority of the medieval manuscripts in Corpus Christi which contain Middle English prose came to the College as part of the bequest of Matthew Parker (1504-75), archbishop of Canterbury, who in 1568 had been given authority by the Privy Council to collect "auncient recordes and monumentes written" for "perusyng of the same". These manuscripts came from all over the south of England, having mainly originated in monastic libraries. Some were subsequently returned to their owners, but the majority appear to have remained with Parker and to have been considered his personal property, to dispose of as he wished. The majority went to Corpus Christi, where he had been Master from 1544-53.Of the 433 Parker manuscripts in the College, 48 are indexed in this Handlist. A further four manuscripts, derived from other sources, containing Middle English are also included. The texts range in length from jottings in the margin of the Bury Bible (MS 2) to a complete Wycliffite sermon cycle (MS 336). The great majority are religious texts; among those are the Ancrene Wisse, The Compendyous Treatise, Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, Richard Rolle's English Psalter, A Treatise of Goostely Batayle, Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection, Beniamyn minor and the Treatise on the Seven Points of True Love and Everlasting Wisdom. There are also a large collection of fourteenth-century medical recipes, Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe, Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon and William Worcester's Itineraries.Kari Anne Rand is Professor of Older English Language at the University of Oslo.