Vernon Manuscript

"Magnificent facsimile - a formidable example of book production. (The) introduction is something like a masterclass in Middle English palaeography and codicology." - "Times Literary Supplement". This is the largest and most important single collection of medieval English religious verse and prose, also containing some French texts. The range of vernacular religious literature accumulated by the end of the 14th century in English is exemplified by the Vernon sequence of moralising lyrics, by a unique Arthurian Grail romance (Joseph of Arimathia), a text of the alliterative "Pistill of Susan", one of the earliest copies of "Piers Plowman" (A-text), the still unpublished "Speculum Vitae" in rhyming couplets and, among some notable prose, an also as yet unpublished recension of the "Ancrene Riwle", an early copy of Walter Hilton's "Scale of Perfection" and important versions of Richard Rolle's epistels, besides some of his other outstanding devotional poems. The English of the two scribes, coming from the central West Midlands, is also of great interest.