The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer and 'The Kingis Quair': A Facsimile of Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Arch. Selden. B. 24 (review)

188 Reviews an Epilogue, Burnley pursues the gradual democratisation of courtly ideals and aspirations, noting that 'gentilesse' comes to appropriate more of the inner values of 'cortaysye' and the latter term is left to signify the outer attributes of manners. O n e can always quarrel with claims about shifts in sensibility across five hundred years, but Burnley is admirably alert to counterturns, and steers cannily and convincingly among tricky spots. In short, this book is a model of h o w an expert can successfully address a matter of wide interest and significance in a manner which will instruct and please a mixed audience of non-specialists, students, and scholars. Robert Easting School of English, Film, and Theatr Victoria University of Wellingto The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer and 'The Kingis Quair': A Facsimile Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Arch. Selden. B. 24, intro. Julia Boffey and A .S. G. Edwards; app. B. C. Barker-Benfield, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1997; cloth; pp. viii, 62 [488]; R.R.P.£395.00. A facsimile of the late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century anthology, Bodleian M S Arch. Selden. B. 24, is a major event. Not only does this manuscript of 231 paper leaves contain texts of Chaucer (including Troilus and Criseyde), Lydgate (Complaint of a Black Knight), Clanvowe (Book of Cupid), Hoccleve (Letter of Cupid) Walton, and other anonymous shorter pieces, it also contains the unique copies of Scottish vernacular works, The Kingis Quair (possibly by James I of Scots) and The Quare ofjelousy. Apparently compiled for Henry, Lord Sinclair (d. 9 September 1513), M S Arch. Reviews 189 Selden. B. 24 provides direct and early evidence of one w a y in which the works of Chaucer and others crossed the border into Scotland. As a Scottish anthology, the manuscript has important parallels with earlier English compilations of Chaucer, which were perhaps first circulated as single text units and later gathered together. In its misattributions to Chaucer, however, Selden also anticipates the printed editions of Thynne (1532) and Stowe (1568). Further, later Scottish compilations (the Asloan, National Library of Scotland, M S 16500; the Bannatyne, NLS, Adv. M S 1.1.6; and the Maitland Folio, Pepys Library, Magdalen College, Cambridge, M S 2553) contain works first found in a Scottish context in Selden. The Asloan MS, for example, similarly includes the anonymous Marian hymn, 'O hie empryss and quene celestiale' (fol. 292). Selden also offers a bearing, of which there are all too few, on early Scottish printing. Lydgate's Complaint of the Black Knight, for instance, is included as 'The Maying and Disport of Chaucer', under which t i t l e it also was issued, with a closely similar text, from the Edinburgh press of Walter Chepman and Andro Myllar in c. 1508. Those scholars interested in seventeenth-century book-collecting and book-collectors will also be attracted to Selden and its later history, as will rare-book bibliographers, n o w that the unconventional binding has been revealed. The reproduction is approximately same size, chiefly using photographs taken after disbinding but prior to conservation. There is no doubt that this policy was correct, since during the conservation process, 'a few letters were lost from the crumbling inner margins' (p. 61). Where, however, the process m a d e significant recoveries, the 'after conservation' photos are also included. The facsimile contains a few logical changes to the manuscript order before disbinding. Possibly this is in part what 190 Reviews is meant by the description appearing on the spine (and nowhere else): 'A Working Facsimile'? The introduction by the well-qualified team of Dr Julia Boffey and Professor A. S. G. Edwards describes the manuscript's content, physical structure and provenance (pp. 1-28). It is admirably complemented by Dr Barker-Benfield's meticulous 'Technical Notes and Collation Chart' (pp. 29-60). (An overlap occurs in the short section by Boffey and Edwards on the binding (p. 3), which could have been omitted, given Barker-Benfield's thorough consideration of it (pp. 29,31-35).) Boffey and Edwards assemble the evidence to support a terminus a quo of c. 1489 with thoroughness. Discussion of the manuscript's scribes is...