Hard-coded id of currently selected item: . JSON version of its record is available from Blacklight on e.g. ??
Metadata associated with selected item should appear here...
Harley MS 2376
- Record Id:
- 040-002048207
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002048207
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000709.0x000374
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100161514829.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 2376
- Title:
-
William Langland, Piers Plowman
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
ff. 1r-124r: William Langland, Piers Plowman (the 'C' (N) text).
Decoration:
Numerous large initials in red ink with purple penwork decoration, with oak leaves in red ink decorating the rubric (f. 1r). Rubric on a scroll drawn in red ink (f. 51r). Parts of the text framed in red ink, sometimes with some penwork. Catchwords on scrolls decorated with red and brown ink. Initials marked with red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002048207", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 2376: William Langland, Piers Plowman" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002048207 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 2376 : William Langland, Piers Plowman - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[2377]/040-002048207
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100161514829.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1400
- End Date:
- 1449
- Date Range:
- 1st half of the 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
Please request the physical items you need using the online collection item request form.
Digitised items can be viewed online by clicking the thumbnail image or digitised content link.
Readers who have registered or renewed their pass since 21 March 2024 can request physical items prior to visiting the Library by completing
this request form.
Please enter the Reference (shelfmark) above on the request form.If your Reader Pass was issued before this date, you will need to visit the Library in London or Yorkshire to renew it before you can request items online. All manuscripts and archives must be consulted at the Library in London.
This catalogue record may describe a collection of items which cannot all be requested together. Please use the hierarchy viewer to navigate to individual items. Some items may be in use or restricted for other reasons. If you would like to check the availability, contact our Reference Services team, quoting the Reference (shelfmark) above.
- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 220 x 140 mm (195 x 120 mm).
Foliation: ff. 124 (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 3 at the end).
Script: Gothic (Anglicana).
Binding: Post-1600. 'Harleian' binding of gold-tooled red leather; marbled endpapers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Western England (South-East of Herefordshire, around Ross-on-Wye).
Provenance:
? ‘John’, owned in the 15th or 16th century: his name inscribed on f. 124r.
An unknown 16th-century owner: added a memorandum on f. 83r: ‘Item George Coll[?ege] was Crystened .45. day of october 1544’.
Nathaniel Noel (fl. 1681, d. c. 1753), bookseller, employed by Edward Harley for buying books and manuscripts chiefly on the Continent, where his agent was George Suttie: sold to Edward Harley on 13 August 1724 (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 225).
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley ‘13 August, A.D. 1724’ (f. 1r).
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library.
- Publications:
-
Merja Black, ‘A scribal translation of Piers Plowman’, Medium Aevum, 67 (1998), 257-90.
Merja Black, ‘Studies in the dialect materials of medieval Herefordshire’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 1997), pp. 105-09.
Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: British Library, 2005), p. 100, no. 1459, 'C' version.
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), no. 2376.
R. W. Chambers, ‘The manuscripts of Piers Plowman in the Huntington Library, and their value for fixing the text of the poem’, The Huntington Library Bulletin, 8 (1935), 1-27 (p. 22).
Piers Plowman: The C Version. Will's Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-Well, Do-Better and Do-Best. An Edition in the Form of the Huntington Library MS HM 143, Corrected and Restored from the Known Evidence, with Variant Readings, ed. by George Russell and George Kane (London: Athlone Press, 1998), p. 9.
William Langland, Piers Plowman: A Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C and Z Versions, ed. by A. V. C. Schmidt (London: Longman, 1995).
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by C. E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), II: 1723-1726, p. 307 n. 2.
Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 253, 255.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)