The Canterbury tales: the new Ellesmere Chaucer facsimile (of Huntington Library MS EL 26 C 9)

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Yushodo Company, 1995 - Fiction - 480 pages
The large manuscript owned by the Huntington Library, in San Marino, California was probably produced soon after 1400. The commissioner is still unknown; possibly, it was firstly owned by John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford and became possession of the Egerton family at the end of the 16th century. The manuscript takes its popular name from the fact that it belonged to Sir Thomas Egerton (1540–1617), Baron Ellesmere and Viscount Brackley, who apparently obtained it from Roger North, 2nd Baron North (1530/31-1600). It contains 240 parchment leaves, 232 of which are the text of the Tales. The remaining leaves were originally blank, lined pages that now contain miscellaneous verses, notes and scribbles by various persons over the course of the 15th and 16th centuries. The original text was written by one scribe in an English style cursive script. There are probably three artists, distinguished on stylistic grounds, who painted the miniatures. The chief purpose of the Ellesmere pilgrim portraits is to facilitate reading by making explicit and visible the manuscript’s arrangement. which classifies the tales according to the narrators. As visual "titles" their function is to introduce and represent the twenty-three tale tellers and only secondarily to illustrate the General Prologue descriptions.

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