Manuscript Description London, British Library MS Additional 12524 | |
| Title: | Legend of Good Women |
| Author: | Chaucer |
| Contents: | Legend of Good Women |
| Language: | English |
| Date Range: | After 1472 |
| Scribal Hands: | Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.                 |
| Material: | Parchment |
| No of Folios: | 1 flyleaf + ii +28 + ii + 1 flyleaf |
| Pagination: | Modern pencil top right corner. Re-backed and perhaps re-numerated at the same time, Oct 1947. |
| Quiring: | Bound so tightly that it is difficult to assess. |
| Signatures: | None |
| Catchwords: | None |
| Page Size: | 180-190 x 130-140 Irregularly trimmed |
| Frame: | 2 x horizontal, 2 x vertical brown |
| Writing Space: | 150 x 100 |
| Incipits and Explicits: | Latin incipits on 1v, 5v.9v,12r, 15r, 17v [Legend of Sismond in verse]. On f28v is final explicit 'Explicit legenda Sismond' in ink of text. This is followed by 'Heyr endyth the legend of ladyse and bygyneth the compleynte of Mars and Venus'. |
| Running Titles: | In red on every recto and verso with name or part name of the lady of the legend. |
| Flourished Initials: | 3 or 4-line red initials to begin each Legend. No flourishing. Red tipping of initial letters |
| Other Names (not owners): | On f1r, Mr Sm(ith)?, R.A. Thoresby. On second leaf 'Purchd at the Strawberry Hill Sale , 30 Apr. 1842. /Lot 102/4/. |
| Further Information: | See 'An early allusion to Chaucer' by Herbert G. Wright in Times Literary Sup. 1935, p. 257. Quotes stanza 1 on f. 23v. The text in this manuscript is published in H. G. Wright (ed) Early English Versions of the Tales of Guiscarde and Ghismonda and Titus and Gisippas from the Decameron. (E.E.T.S., 1937). Janet M. Cowan, 'Eighteenth Century Ownership of Two Chaucer Manuscripts', Notes and Queries, 28, 1981, pp. 392-4. Seymour, vol. I, pp. 89-90 |