Manuscript Description USA, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections MS 100 | |
| MS Appellation: | Helmingham, He (Manly and Rickert) |
| Title: | Canterbury Tales |
| Author: | Chaucer |
| Contents: | Canterbury Tales |
| Language: | English |
| Date Range: | 1425-1450 and 1450-1475 |
| Scribal Hands: | Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.               |
| Dialect: | Essex |
| Material: | Combination |
| No of Folios: | iii + 215 |
| Pagination: | Modern (post 1925) foliation replaces evidence of two earlier ones. |
| Quiring: | 1(5 i-iii missing), 2-10(8), 11(6 i and viii missing),12(8), 13(6 i and viii missing), 14-21(8), 22(4)----23-26(8), 27(5 iv-vi missing), 28(8), 29(5 vi-viii missing) |
| Signatures: | Old signatures on paper leaves using lower case letters. 'p' visible in quire 13, and 'q' in quire 14. |
| Catchwords: | Regularly throughout with one or two lacking. |
| Page Size: | 300 x 200 for Parchment |
| Frame: | Red ink ruling for the parchment section for margins and text box. Faint ruled margins visible in some of the paper sections. |
| Writing Space: | Parchment = 210 x 120; Paper 190 x 110 |
| Incipits and Explicits: | Red ink for incipits and explicits. |
| Marginal Headings: | Glosses are in both red and brown ink, framed in red. |
| Running Titles: | Red running titles on recto and verso preceded by blue paraphs. |
| Paragraph Marks: | Red and blue paraphs. |
| Flourished Initials: | Blue 3-line initials flourished in red at beginning of tales with simple blue initials with no flourishing to mark other divisions in the text. |
| Other Names (not owners): | On f59v is the name 'Lyonell Tallemache' probably 16th century and perhaps referring to the Lionel who died in 1612. The numerous other names found in the manuscript confirm its early association with Suffolk, home of the Tollemaches. It remained in the same family at Helmingham Hall until sold in 1962 to a book dealer Laurence Witten. Bought by Princeton in 1963. |
| Further Information: | Manly and Rickert I: 256-265. Seymour II: 225-230. |