Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales

• The six earliest manuscripts; the "a" manuscripts; the four manuscripts certainly written before 1440; the "d" family of manuscripts; eight additional manuscripts; the decade of the fiftiess; the decade of the sixtiess; after 1470; single tales and small groups.

A pleasure to welcome a book devoted to all the manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales... deals with each manuscript in turn, giving some details of its order of tales, its unusual codicological and palaeographical features, its possible date and scribes, and its affilitations with other manuscripts... the sense of development in the manuscript tradition does come through. MEDIUM AEVUMThis is a work of bedrock scholarship in which Owen developes effectively his thesis concerning Hengwrt and the lack of evidence that any ordering of the manuscript fragments could be attributed to Chaucer. ...a major contribution to Chaucer scholarship. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATUREContains much that is fresh, penetrating, and of lasting consequence... will serve as a valuable reference for some time to come.