Professor Nokes, over at
Unlocked Wordhoard, has announced
Happy Cotton Library Day, in celebration of those manuscripts that
didn't burn in the fire of 1731, and solicited our responses regarding our favorite Cotton MS.
It's a hard question, actually. There are a lot of really important, and really famous ms. in the British Library's Cotton collection. You can see
a complete list here, and
a list of the "stars" here, a list which includes the unique-but-burned-in-the-fire ms. of
Vitellius A.xv Nowell Codex, containing
Beowulf and
Judith, or the mss. of the major Aelfrich texts, and the only copy of the Gawain Poet's works.
I'd have to say I can't really decide between Nero A.x, which contains
Pearl, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as the less well known works of the same poet,
Patience, and
Purity/Cleanness, and Nero D.iv
Lindisfarne Gospels.
Labels: manuscripts
1 Comments:
It's hard to think how much might potentially have been lost.
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