Two very different collections are surveyed in this volume. The manuscripts of Pembroke College, Cambridge are typical of a medieval foundation. Its core of books is a working library of that period, representing the interests and needs of its Fellows, very often given or bequeathed by them to the College. The collection was substantially enlarged in 1599 through the gift by William Smart of Ipswich of a large number of manuscripts which until the Reformation had belonged to the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. By contrast the emphasis of the Fitzwilliam Museum collection is to a great extent art...

The majority of the medieval manuscripts in Corpus Christi which contain Middle English prose came to the College as part of the bequest of Matthew Parker (1504-75), archbishop of Canterbury, who in 1568 had been given authority by the Privy Council to collect -auncient recordes and monumentes written- for -perusyng of the same-. These manuscripts came from all over the south of England, having mainly originated in monastic libraries. Some were subsequently returned to their owners, but the majority appear to have remained with Parker and to have been considered his personal property, to...

The project to publish a complete listing of all known manuscript items containing Middle English prose began in 1978, and the first volume appeared in 1984. The final listing will consist of some fifty volumes; with the publication of the twentieth volume in 2009, the corpus was sufficiently extensive to justify the first comprehensive index to the contents of the existing titles. This, the resulting volume, is a vital research tool for anyone working with Middle English prose texts. It is designed to give immediate access to the indices now found separately in the first twenty descriptive...