The Making of the Vernon Manuscript: The Production and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Poet.a.1 ed. by Wendy Scase, and: A Facsimile Edition of the Vernon Manuscript: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Eng. Poet.a.1 ed. by Wendy Scase (review)

The Vernon Manuscript (Bodleian MS Eng.poet.a.1) is a huge collection of Middle English literary and religious writings, amounting to more than 370 texts. They include most of the important works of the era, including Piers Plowman, the Ancrene Riwle, and the Prick of Conscience. It appears to have been made in the last decade of the fourteenth century, but its history is only known from c. 1677 when Colonel Vernon presented it to the Bodleian Library. There are still many questions about its origins and its making which cannot be answered definitively. Where was it made, by whom, and for what purpose? How were the texts selected and obtained? Who wrote and decorated it?

The essays in this volume attempt to address these questions in a systematic way. They look at the Vernon Manuscript as ‘a complex of processes’, not just as a literary and textual source. The contributors discuss the making of the manuscript from a variety of disciplinary perspectives: its codicology, palaeography and provenance, its scribes, its linguistic features, and its decoration and illustration. A particularly interesting contribution is Ryan Perry’s attempt to deduce the ‘editorial politics’ which may have guided the selection of texts for the volume, situating it in the context of the threat posed by the theologies of John Wyclif and the Lollards.

Wendy Scase draws together many of these findings in her discussion of the possible patronage which brought the manuscript into being. Her innovative and persuasive approach is to build up a profile of the ‘nexus of patronage and production’ required for such a large and complex undertaking, and to test this against the known possibilities. In the context of contemporary reservations about conspicuous displays of patronage, she suggests that the manuscript’s own silence about its origins should be seen as a response to the heretical views of the time. She identifies William Beauchamp – younger brother of Thomas Beauchamp, twelfth Earl of Warwick – as the most likely patron.

This collection of essays provides the most exhaustive and wide-ranging examination to date of this remarkable and significant manuscript. The contributors raise a series of stimulating questions for further investigation, and the volume provides an excellent model for similar analyses in the future of other ‘massy’ anthologies of vernacular Middle English literature.

This volume is closely linked to the digital edition of the Vernon Manuscript published by the Bodleian Library in 2012. Also edited by Wendy Scase, this DVD edition presents the manuscript in a full-colour facsimile with a hyperlinked transcription of the complete text. The images can be magnified up to 800 per cent, and the text is fully searchable. The accompanying materials include specialist essays on the contents, production, decoration, and language of the manuscript, as well as a detailed glossary. Easy to use, sophisticated, and scholarly, this digital edition brings the Vernon Manuscript within the reach of every researcher.