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Manuscript Description
England, Manchester, John Rylands Library MS Eng. 113
 
MS Appellation:Ma (Manly and Rickert)
Title:Canterbury Tales
Author:Chaucer
Contents:Poem on the death of King Edward IV; poem beginning 'Musyng alone
Latin articles on the Passion; Canterbury Tales (ff6-194); 'Periculum animarum
a list of the deaths of English Kings from Edward I to the accession of Richard III.
Language:English
Date Range:1483-1485 (Manly and Rickert)
Scribal Hands:
Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.
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Dialect:Warwicks : (Mosser 1990)
Material:Paper with a few parchment flyleaves
No of Folios:1-4 (old paper folios) +5(vellum) + 6-195 + 2 parchment flyleaves (196-197-not full size)
Pagination:Modern pencil top right includes flyleaves in foliation.
Quiring:v + 1-8(24) + ii
Signatures:No signatures remain.
Catchwords:By the scribe in ink of text with black ink underline extending up at sides to form 3-sided sleigh. Usually in lower margin to right of text box space with a few letters over-running the frame.
Page Size:302 x 207
Frame:4 x vertical enclosing column of text and column for glosses on either side, 2 x horizontal with upper one forming top of minim line for top line of text; brown crayon and drypoint.
Writing Space:240 x 80
Incipits and Explicits:Regularly throughout first in Latin to the end of Squire's Tale, thereafter in English.
Marginal Headings:Latin glosses in the margin which may or may not be in the hand of the scribe.
Running Titles:On every folio in upper margin.
Paragraph Marks:On f6r only; alternating red and blue rhyme markers on right edge of column
Flourished Initials:One only on f6; 4-line blue lombard initial with pale red pen-work.
Other Names (not owners): On f4v 'Bara(d?)oun Henricus transtulit istud opus per semet ipsum'. On f196r is the name 'John Hull' a Devon man whom Manly and Rickert suggest may have owned the manuscript in the fifteenth century. They also provide evidence of a Brode family's west country connections. Thereafter nothing is known until it was bought by the Rylands Library in 1906 at the sale of Lawrence Hodson.
Miscellaneous Info:There is no other coloured ink and no intention to include any since no space is left for key letters.
Further Information:Manly and Rickert I: 349-355; M. C. Seymour II: 154-158; Griffiths, Jeremy. ‘New Light on the Provenance of a Copy of The Canterbury Tales, John Rylands Library, MS Eng. 113’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 77:2 (1995): 25-30.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP