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Sloane MS 261
- Record Id:
- 040-002112607
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002112337
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000505.0x0003a5
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100193732003.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Sloane MS 261
- Title:
-
Geoffrey Chaucer, 'Treatise on the Astrolabe', revised by Walter Stevins
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains a revised version of Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Treatise on the Astrolabe', undertaken by an otherwise unknown editor called Walter Stevins, and dedicated by him to Edward Courtenay (b. c. 1527, d. 1556), 1st Earl of Devon. The volume can be dated between 1553, the year Courtenay was made Earl of Devon, and 1556, the year of his death.
It has been suggested that Stevins used another manuscript of Chaucer's 'Treatise' as the basis for his edition of the text, now Sloane MS 314, whose text bears close similarities and features added marginal notes and corrections written in the same hand as Sloane MS 261. On this and the identification of Edward Courtenay, see Brae, The Treatise on the Astrolabe (1870), pp. 6-11.
Contents:
f. 1*r: Title-page.
f. 2r-v: Dedication to Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon, written in English, beginning, 'When I had amended this lyttell work...'
ff. 3r-4r: Preface to the reader, written in English, beginning, 'When I happenyd to look upon the conclusions...'
ff. 4v-5v: Alphabetical index of topics.
ff. 6r-66v: Geoffrey Chaucer, 'Treatise on the Astrolabe', in a revised version by Walter Stevins, written in English, beginning, 'Lytle Lowys my sonne...'
ff. 1v and 1*v are blank.
Decoration:
27 diagrams in pen-and-ink (ff. 1*r, 8v, 9v, 11r, 12r, 13r, 14r, 18r, 18v, 19r, 19v, 20v, 22v, 24v, 25r, 26r, 28v, 29r, 48v, 56r, 60r, 61r, 62r, 63r, 64r, 65r, 66v), typically based on the figures featured in Joannes Stoffler's 1512 Latin explanation of the construction and use of an astrolabe (Eisner, Treatise on the Astrolabe (2002), pp. 76-77).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Sloane Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002112337
040-002112607 - Is part of:
- Sloane MS 1-4100 : Sloane Manuscripts
Sloane MS 261 : Geoffrey Chaucer, 'Treatise on the Astrolabe', revised by Walter Stevins - Hierarchy:
- 032-002112337[0270]/040-002112607
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Sloane MS 1-4100
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100193732003.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1553
- End Date:
- 1556
- Date Range:
- 1553-1556
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Paper.
Dimensions: 285 x 195 mm (written space varies: 210/210 x 125/30 mm).
Foliation: ff. 66 + 1* (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 3 at the end); f. 1* is a paper leaf.
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: British Museum in-house. Brown half-leather binding with the Sloane arms gold-stamped on the upper and lower covers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
Edward Courtenay (b. c. 1527, d. 1556), 1st Earl of Devon: Stevins' dedication of the manuscript to him (f. 2r-v).
Sir Hans Sloane (b. 1660, d. 1753), baronet, physician and collector: his former shelfmarks, 'MS A 459' and 'XVIII.E' and a memorandum that he loaned the volume to John Urry (b. 1666, d. 1715), scholar and editor of Chaucer's works, in May 1712 (f. 1r), confirmed by an entry for 21 May 1712 in the diary of the antiquarian Thomas Hearne (b. 1678, d, 1735) and later correspondence by Sloane in 1715/17 concerning their return after Urry's death (Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years (1925), I, pp. 320, 335-37, 341-42).
Purchased as part of the Sloane collection from Sloane's executors and incorporated into the newly founded British Museum in 1753.
- Publications:
-
Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Sloanianae (Manuscripts 1-1091) ([London: British Museum], no date), no. 261.
The Treatise on the Astrolabe of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. by Andrew Edmund Brae (London: John Russell, 1870), pp. 6-11.
A Treatise on the Astrolabe by Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. by Walter W. Skeat (London: N. Truber & Co for The Early English Text Society, 1872), pp. xii-xiii.
Caroline Frances Eleanor Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion, 1357-1900, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), I, pp. 92-93, 320, 335-37, 341-42.
Ramona Bressie, 'MS Sloane 3548, Folio 158', Modern Language Notes, 54 (1939), 246-56 (p. 248 n. 5).
Chaucer's Treatise on the Astolabe. MS. 4862-4869 of the Royal Library in Brussels, ed. by P. Pintelon (Antwerp: De Sinkkell, 1940), pp. 5-6.
The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by Larry Dean Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 1193-95.
Kari Anne Rand Schmidt, The Authorship of the Equatorie of the Planetis (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), p. 57.
Geoffrey Chaucer: The Critical Heritage, ed. by Derek Brewer, 2 vols (London Routledge, 1995), I, 1385-1837, p. 104.
A Treatise on the Astrolabe, ed. by Sigmund Eisner (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), pp. xxi, 12, 22, 41-42, 46-47, 74, 76-79, 86, 88-89, 111, 114-16, 120, 122.
Devani Singh, Chaucer's Early Modern Readers: Reception in Print and Manuscript (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 37, 38.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)