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Add MS 59678
- Record Id:
- 032-001998125
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001998125
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000036.0x000222
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 59678
- Title:
-
Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur
- Scope & Content:
-
Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur, which was composed in Newgate Prison, London between March 1469 and March 1470. This unique manuscript copy was made shortly before the earliest printed version was published by Caxton in July 1485. The text differs significantly from the printed edition and is imperfect: the first and last quires and 3 internal leaves (ff. 32, 33 and 252), are lacking. It begins ‘kynge Arthur and his courte and to helpe hym in hys warrys...’ (in Chapter 10, Book 1 of Caxton’s edition) and ends ‘..I had passed all the knygts that ever were in the Sankgreall’ (in Chapter 9, Book 21).
Decoration: Marginal ink drawing of a cross in red (f. 357v). 3 large initials in red with pen-flourishing in brown or in blue with pen-flourishing in red (ff. 71r, 349r and 409v). 108 initials in red. Rubrics, names and marginal notes in red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-001998125", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 59678: Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001998125
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-001998125
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
A paper codex
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_59678 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English
English, Middle - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1466
- End Date:
- 1483
- Date Range:
- c 1471-1483
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
- Restrictions to access apply please consult British Library staff
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Paper codex. The paper is French, with three distinct watermarks. Two are similar to Briquet's nos. 1685 (c. 1471-1480) and 8861 (1477).
Dimensions: 285 x 200mm (text space: 190 x 135mm).
Foliation: ff. 473 (+ 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end).
Foliated as 9-31, 34-251, 253-484 in pencil in Oakeshott's hand (c 1934); ff. 1-8 and 32-33 and 252 are missing.
Collation: i-ii8 (9-24),iii8-1(25-31), iv8-1(34-40), v6-2(41-44),vi-xxx8, xxxi8-1(245-51), xxxii-lx8; catchwords at the end of quires and numbering of the first 4 leaves of each quire in arabic or roman numerals (some have been lost when manuscript was trimmed).
Script: Gothic cursive. Copied by two scribes: scribe (A), the supervisor, was responsible for most of ff. 9-45, l. 6, ff. 191v-229r and ff. 349r-484v, and scribe (B) for ff. 35, lines 9-24, f. 45, lines 7-32, ff. 45v-191 and ff. 229v-346v (see: British Library, 1995).
Layout: Written in 1 column of 28-33 lines. Margins are ruled in ink at 185-135mm.
Binding: White pigskin, by Roger Powell, of Froxfield, 1948, with box. One of the covers of an earlier red sheepskin binding, circa 1800, is preserved separately as f. iv.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England, S.
Provenance: William Caxton (c1420–1492), printer, merchant, and diplomat, perhaps in his workshop c. 1480-1483: print offset visible on ff. 159r, 186v, 187r and 407r (see Hellinga 1986). A fragment measuring 59 x 70mm of an indulgence printed by Caxton in 1489, formerly used for a repair to f. 243, now mounted separately within the box holding the manuscript.
Richard Followell of Litchborough (before 1535): his inscription on f. 348r. The manor of Litchborough was owned by a branch of the Malory family (see Kelliher 1981).
Winchester College Library, inscribed no 13 (f. 9), in catalogue of the Fellows' Library compiled by W.T. Alchin, solicitor and librarian (b. 1790, d. 1865) in 1839-40, p. 446, and re-discovered by Sir Walter Fraser Oakeshott, art historian and librarian, in the college library in 1934.
Roger Powell, bookbinder, his notes on the repairs and binding of the manuscript in 1948 are bound inside the back cover (reproduced in The Winchester Malory, 1976, pp. xix-xx).
Purchased by the British Library from the Warden and Fellows of Winchester college on 26th March 1976.
- Source of Acquisition:
-
Purchased by the British Library from the Warden and Fellows of Winchester college on 26th March 1976.
- Information About Copies:
-
Full facsimile: The Winchester Malory, with an introduction by N. R. Ker (Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series, no. 4, 1976).
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts.
- Publications:
-
The Winchester Malory, with an introduction by N. R. Ker (Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series, no. 4, 1976).
Lotte Hellinga, 'The Malory Manuscript and Caxton', in Aspects of Malory, ed. by Toshiyuki Takamiya and Derek Brewer, Arthurian Studies I, (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1981), pp. 127-31.
Hilton Kelliher, 'The Early History of the Malory Manuscript', (in Aspects of Malory, above), pp. 143-58.
The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. by Eugène Vinaver, 3 vols., 3rd edn., revised by P. J. C. Field, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
The British Library Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts 1976-1980 (London: British Library, 1995), pp. 8-9.
P.J.C. Field, 'Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur in The Arthur of the English, ed. by W.R.J Barron, Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, 5 vols (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999), pp. 225-46 (p. 228).
Helen Cooper, 'Opening up the Malory manuscript' in The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of 'Le Morte Darthur', ed. by Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick and Michael N. Salda, Arthurian Studies, 47 (Woodbridge: Suffolk, 2000), pp. 255-83.
P. J. C. Field, 'Malory own marginalia', Medium Aevum 70.2. (2001), 226-39.
Chris Fletcher, Roger Evans, and Sally Brown, 1000 Years of English Literature: A Treasury of Literary Manuscripts (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003), pp. 40-41.
Meg Roland, ''Alas! Who may truste thys world': The Malory Documents and a Parallel Text Edition' in The Book Unbound: Editing and Reading Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed. by Sian Echard and Stephen Partridge (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 37-57.
Jane Roberts, Guide to Scripts used in English Writings up to 1500 (London: British Library, 2005), no. 55.
- Exhibitions:
- British Library Treasures, (online), 27 February 2016-
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)