Ralph Crane and the Authorship of The Most Auntient Historie of God and Man, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library MS PR2199.M67

This article examines the authorship of the 1629 manuscript poem The Most Auntient Historie of God and Man, now University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, MS PR2199.M67 (fig. 1). The manuscript and its contents have previously been tentatively attributed to the early modern scribe and poet Ralph Crane. This article uses surviving evidence of Crane’s hand, his compositional habits, and his scribal career in order to establish that Crane was not the author or scribe of the Auntient Historie. It goes on to consider possible alternative authors, including Richard Crashaw, Richard Corbett, Robert Creighton, Robert Croft, and Roger Cocks.