Manuscripts and Miscellanies

The inscription in the back of the British Library’s mid-fifteenth-century manuscript Harley 4012 reads, ‘Thys ys the boke of dame anne wyngefeld of harlyng’, a statement that both suggests its writer’s pride in ownership of so beautiful a book and reminds any borrower of the book that it must be returned, and to whom. The manuscript is certainly visually impressive. For a book that belonged in a woman’s private collection, it is a sizeable volume, approximately 25 by 16cm, despite having been cropped on all sides. The manuscript’s enlarged initials are often elaborate: gilt letters shimmer with quill work, and plum, blue and green designs swoop over both top and left margins, sometimes with tiny gilded fruits painted in the foliage. Other initials are less intricate, but no less impressive: gilt accents two tones of blue, with decorative inkwork surrounding the text up to the binding. A few initials, less extravagant, are simply painted blue and red and left ungilded. Highlighted sentences may be enlarged or rubricated red; new paragraphs are marked with red or blue. The varying hands may indicate that several different scribes helped copy the book, but the colours and style of the artwork are consistent throughout, suggesting it was a planned compilation. The vellum pages seem spacious: the lines never look cramped, and margins appear generous, perhaps partly because they are free of marginalia. The book was clearly well planned – and expensive. It is easy to imagine the mixture of pride and anxiety suggested by the inscription upon the author’s loan of the book to another reader. We might even read into the inscription an awareness that the borrower keeps multiple books, perhaps borrowed from multiple literate friends, and needs help to keep straight which one goes back to Anne Wyngefeld of Harlyng.

There are no such identifying marks on another British Library manuscript, Arundel 168, a contemporary of Harley 4012. It is even larger than Harley 4012, approximately 32 by 22cm, but it is not nearly as colourful or as well designed. The manuscript appears to have been executed in haste and with an eye toward completing it cheaply rather than achieving legibility: its pages are crowded, with two columns of text heavy on abbreviations and very narrow margins. Vellum pages are mixed with somewhat thick (cheaper) paper ones.