The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript

British Library MS Harley 2253 is one of the most important literary works to survive from the English medieval era. In rarity, quality, and abundance, its secular love lyrics comprise an unrivaled collection. Intermingled with them are contemporary political songs as well as delicate lyrics designed to inspire religious devotion.

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Although few concrete details exist about the fourteenth-century manuscript known as London, British Library MS Harley 2253, it contains one of the most important surviving literary collections from medieval England. In rarity, quality and abundance, its collection of secular love lyrics is unrivaled, accompanying delicate lyrics of religious devotion and contemporary political songs preserved in no other manuscript. Beyond these Middle English treasures are no less intriguing French and Latin works: four fabliaux (the largest set from medieval England), three Anglo-Saxon saints’ lives, and numerous satires, comedies, debates, interludes, collected sayings, conduct literature, Bible stories, dream interpretations, and pilgrim guides. This phenomenal range owes to the Ludlow scribe, the manuscript’s compiler and copyist, himself credited with authoring parts of the collection. Volume 1 presents Booklets 1 and 2 of the manuscript, containing the rich assortment of religious narratives in Anglo-French verse and prose copied by Scribe A.