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Manuscript Description London, British Library MS Additional 25718 | |
| MS Appellation: | Ad2 (Manly and Rickert) |
| Title: | Canterbury Tales |
| Author: | Chaucer |
| Contents: | Parts of about ten of the Canterbury Tales survive. |
| Language: | English |
| Date Range: | 1400-1425 |
| Scribal Hands: | Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.                 Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.                 |
| Material: | Parchment |
| No of Folios: | iv paper flyleaves + 88 vellum + iv paper flyleaves (however, this represents three fragments from an original single manuscript). |
| Pagination: | Three originally discontinuous fragments now numbered 1-40, 41-47, 48-88. |
| Quiring: | Originally in 8's. Many folios missing and some fragments which are now isolated. |
| Signatures: | Between ff41-44, presumably the first half of an original quire, it is possible to see j-iiij in the bottom right corner of the folios. |
| Catchwords: | Some original catchwords n ff. 22, 30 and 38. Others appear to have been removed, whereas some seem to have been added at a later date perhaps on rebinding. |
| Page Size: | Varies; some folios have modern parchment additions. |
| Writing Space: | Also variable. |
| Incipits and Explicits: | Explicit to 'Physykes tale' on f52r. The incipit for Shipman's Tale follows although the text is of the Physician-Pardoner Link. See Manly and Rickert for suggestion that this may be evidence for two separate fragments. |
| Running Titles: | In the ink of the text and preceded by red paraphs. |
| Paragraph Marks: | Red and blue |
| Flourished Initials: | Blue flourished with red ink to indicate divisions in the text. |
| Other Names (not owners): | On f1r is 'Dorthe Borothe'. |
| Miscellaneous Info: | Scribe 1's hand is similar to the hand of the fragment Plimpton 253. |
| Further Information: | Manly and Rickert, Vol. I, 34-40; McCormick, 9-12; Seymour Vol. II, 98-103. |