Manuscripts and Ghosts

Essays on the transmission of medieval and early renaissance literature

John Scattergood

This collection of essays which concentrates mainly on the late medieval period in England, explores how manuscript books were made, who made them, who owned them, and how they passed from one owner to another.

The subjects of these essays include, amongst other things, studies of an Anglo-Saxon riddle on the destruction of manuscripts, Chaucer’s famous poem on ‘Adam’ his own scribe, a Lollard Bible owned by a succession of religious dissidents, two manuscripts of the Middle English Brut chronicle, and Trinity College Dublin MS 160, one of the most authoritative collections of early Tudor poetry.

John Scattergood is professor of medieval and Renaissance English, Trinity College Dublin.