Original and Extra Series Books, 1903-1906.3
☛ The Society intends to complete, as soon as its funds will allow, the Reprints of its out-of-print Texts of the year 1866, and also of nos. 20, 26 and 33. Prof. Skeat has finisht Partenay; Dr. McKnight of Ohio King Horn and Floris and Blancheflour; and Dr. Furnivall his Political, Religious and Love Poems and Myrc’s Duties of a Parish Priest. Dr. Otto Glauning has undertaken Seinte Marherete; and Dr. Furnivall has Hali Meidenhad in type. As the cost of these Reprints, if they were not needed, would have been devoted to fresh Texts, the Reprints will be sent to all Members in lieu of such Texts. Though called 'Reprints,' these books are new editions, generally with valuable additions, a fact not noticed by a few careless receivers of them, who have complained that they already had the volumes. As the Society’s copies of the Facsimile of the Epinal MS. issued as an Extra Volume in 1883 are exhausted, Mr. J. H. Hessels, M.A., of St. John’s Coll., Cambridge, has kindly undertaken an edition of the MS. for the Society. This will be substituted for the Facsimile as an 1883 book, but will be also issued to all the present Members.
July 1904. The Original-Series Texts for 1903 were: No. 122, Part II of The Laud MS. Troy-Book, edited from the unique Laud MS. 595 by Dr. J. E. Wülfing; and No. 123, Part II of Robert of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne, and its French original, ed. by Dr. F. J. Furnivall.
The Extra-Series Texts for 1903 are to be: No. LXXXVIII, Le Morte Arthur, in 8-line stanzas, re-edited from the unique MS. Harl. 2252, by Prof. J. Douglas Bruce (issued), No. LXXXIX, Lydgate’s Reason and Sensuality, edited by Dr. Ernst Sieper, Part II, and No. XC, English Fragments from Latin Medieval Service-Books, edited, and given to the Society, by Mr. Henry Littlehales.
The Original-Series Texts for 1904 will be No. 124, t. Hen. V, Twenty-six Political and other Poems from the Digby MS. 102, &c., edited by Dr. J. Kail, and No. 125, Part I of the Medieval Records of a London City Church (St. Mary-at-Hill), a.p. 1420-1559, copied and edited by Mr. Henry Littlehales from the Church Records in the Guildhall, the: cost of the setting and corrections of the text being generously borne by its Editor. This book will show the income and outlay of the church; the drink provided for its Palm-Sunday players, its officers’ excursions into Kent and Essex, its dealing with the Plague, the disposal of its goods at the Reformation, &c., &c., and will help our members to realize the churchThe third Text will be Part I of An Alphabet of Tales, a very interesting life of its time. collection, englisht in the Northern Dialect, about 1440, from the Latin Alphabetum Narrationum by Etienne de Bésancon, and edited by Mrs. M. M. Banks from the unique MS. in the King’s Library in the British Museum; the above-named three texts are now ready for Those for 1905 and 1906 will probably be chosen from Part II of the Exeter Book— issue. Anglo-Saxon Poems from the unique MS. in Exeter Cathedral—re-edited by Israel Gollancz, M.A.; Part II of Prof. Dr. Holthausen’s Vices and Virtues ; Part II of Jacob’s Well, edited by Dr. Brandeis; the Alliterative Siege of Jerusalem, edited by the late Prof. Dr. E. Kolbing and Prof. Dr. Kaluza; an Introduction and Glossary to the Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. by H. Hartley, M.A.; Alain Chartier’s Quadrilogue, edited from the unique MS. Univ. Coll. Oxford MS. No. 85, by Mr. J. W. H. Atkins of Owen’s College; a Northern Verse Chronicle of England to 1327 a.D., in 42,000 lines, about 1420 a.p., edited by M. L. Perrin, B.A.; Prof. Bruce’s Introduction to The English Conquest of Ireland, Part II; and. Dr. Furnivall’s edition of the Lichfield Gilds, which is all printed, and waits only for the Introduction, that Prof. E. C. K. Gonner has kindly undertaken to write for the book. Canon Wordsworth of Marlborough has given the Society a copy of the Leofric Canonical Rule, Latin and Anglo-Saxon, Parker MS. 191, C. C. C. Cambridge, and Prof. Napier will edit it, with a fragment of the englisht Capitula of Bp. Theodulf. The Coventry Leet Book is being copied for the Society by Miss M. Dormer Harris—helpt by a contribution from the Common Council of the City, and will be publisht by the Society (Miss Harris editing), as its contribution to our knowledge of the provincial city life of the 15th century.
Dr. Brie of Berlin has undertaken to edit the prose Brut or Chronicle of Britain He has already examined more attributed to Sir John Mandeville, and printed by Caxton. than 100 English MSS. and several French ones, to get the best text, and find out its source.
The Extra-Series Texts for 1904 will be chosen from Lydgate’s DeGuilleville’s Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, Part III, edited by Miss Locock; Dr. M. Konrath’s re-edition of William of Shoreham’s Poems, Part II; Dr. E. A. Kock’s edition of Lovelich’s Merlin from the unique MS. in Corpus Christi Coll., Cambridge ; the Macro Plays, edited from Mr. Gurney’s MS. by Dr. Furnivall and A. W. Pollard, M.A.; Prof. Erdmann’s re-edition of Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes (issued also by the Chaucer Society) ; Miss Rickert’s re-edition of the Romance of Hmare ; Prof. I. Gollancz’s re-edition of two Alliterative Poems, Winner and Waster, &c., ab. 1360, lately issued for the Roxburghe Club; Dr. Norman Moore’s re-edition of The Book of the Foundation of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, from the unique MS. ab. 1425, which gives an account of the Founder, Rahere, and the miraculous cures wrought at the Hospital; The Craft of Nombrynge, with other of the earliest englisht Treatises on Arithmetic, edited by R. Steele, B.A. ; and Miss Warren’s two-text edition of The Dance of Death from the Ellesmere and other MSS.
These Extra-Series Texts ought to be completed by their Editors: the Second Part of the prose Romance of Jelusine—Introduction, with ten facsimiles of the best woodblocks of the old foreign black-letter editions, Glossary, &c., by A. K. Donald, B.A. (now in India);
