Manuscript Description USA, San Marino, CA, Henry E. Huntington Library MS El 26 C.9 | |
| MS Appellation: | Ellesmere; El (Manly and Rickert) |
| Title: | Canterbury Tales |
| Author: | Chaucer |
| Contents: | Canterbury Tales |
| Language: | English |
| Date Range: | 1397-1410 |
| Scribal Hands: | Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.                 |
| Dialect: | Adam Pinkhurst : Chaucerian |
| Material: | Parchment of high quality |
| No of Folios: | iv + 232 + iv |
| Pagination: | Modern pencil in top outer corners recto; 19th century foliation 2-240 incorporating the original end-leaves, used by F. J. Furnivall in Chaucer Society Publications from 1868; another foliation, 2-243 in upper left-hand corner of versos. |
| Quiring: | 1-29(8) |
| Signatures: | A few traces of signatures but mainly removed through cropping. |
| Catchwords: | The tops of the letters of a single catchword remain on f184v; all the rest have been lost in cropping. |
| Page Size: | 420 x 290 |
| Frame: | 6 x vertical to include an outer column frame for marginalia, 4 x horizontal enclosing the text box + 2 for the running titles. |
| Writing Space: | 310-322 x 153-155 |
| Incipits and Explicits: | Regularly by the scribe in the ink of the text. |
| Marginal Headings: | Glosses are by the scribe copied into the ruled space for marginalia and preceded by paraphs. |
| Running Titles: | On rectos and versos by the scribe in the ink of the text and preceded by paraphs. Generally the name of the pilgrim narrator . |
| Table of Contents: | On f235v is a list of the contents and the pilgrim narrator. Also on the same folio, a copy of Chaucer's poem Truth. |
| Borders: | 71 borders; three-sided borders only; gold, rose, blue, burnt orange, green |
| Illuminated Initials: | 225 large capitals from 2-6-lines in height with colours used as in border colours. |
| Miniatures: | 23 miniatures of Pilgrims, all on horseback |
| Paragraph Marks: | Blue paraphs with red flourishing or gold with violet pen-work mark textual divisions and glosses and precede running titles. |
| Flourished Initials: | Small flourished initials define stanzas and sometimes glosses. |
| Other Names (not owners): | On f1v are several names; 'Robertus Drury miles. William Drury miles. Domina Jarmin. Domina Jarningam. Dommina Alington. Edward Waldegrave 'Margery seynt John ys a shrew' Thomas Calthorpp of'. On f130 'per me Henricum Payne'. On fiv(v) are 'I DVRUM 5 PATI 68' and two sets of English verses signed 'R. North' and 'R.N'. The first Earl of Bridgwater's pressmark appears on fii. The manuscript stayed in this family until bought by the Huntington Library in 1917. |
| Further Information: | Manly and Rickert I: 148-159. Seymour II: 230-235. Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, eds. The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation. San Marino, CA & Tokyo: Huntington Library & Yushodo Co., Ltd., 1995. Doyle, A. I., and M. B. Parkes. 'The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century.' in M. B. Parkes and A. G. Watson, eds. Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts, and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker. London: Scolar Press, 1978. 163-210. |