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Manuscript Description
USA, New York, NY, Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum MS M 249
 
MS Appellation:Mg (Manly and Rickert)
Title:Canterbury Tales
Author:Chaucer
Contents:Canterbury Tales
Language:English
Date Range:1450-1475
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:Chaucerian/Standardised
Material:Parchment
No of Folios:iii(old vellum flyleaves now numbered 1-3) + 4- 271 + iii (numbered 272-274)
Pagination:Recent foliation includes the vellum flyleaves.
Quiring:1-25(8), 26(6), 27-34(8), + 1 stuck to first vellum fly.
Signatures:Quires 1-16 have roman numerals in yellowish ink on the last verso leaf of each quire.
Catchwords:A single catchword on f217v.
Page Size:290 x 200
Frame:Double ruled lines on three sides in brown crayon
Writing Space:220 x 125
Incipits and Explicits:Regular explicits and incipits for prologues and tales.
Marginal Headings:Authorities cited in Tale of Melibeus and Parson's Tale in the margins in the ink of the text.
Running Titles:In the ink of the text and preceded by red paraphs.
Paragraph Marks:Red paraphs precede headings.
Flourished Initials:Red with dark ink pen-work except for the first 6-line initial which is blue with red pen-work.
Other Names (not owners):On f4v is 'Sara Jones', 'To her suster', and 'to her father'. Manly and Rickert also suggest a connection with the Congreve family of Staffordshire, having seen a marriage connection between the granddaughter of Thomas Hoord (see early owners)and a John Congreve who died before 1535. This was on the basis of a faint pencilled note and the initials I.C on the binding. The manuscript later passed through the hands of the Earl of Ashburnham and Yates Thompson, going to the Pierpont Morgan Library in 1907.
Further Information:Manly and Rickert I: 372-375. Seymour 158-162.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP