Month: November 2023

Even Manuscript Studies are Susceptible to Cyber Attacks

by Candace Barrington

The Early Book Society and Martha Driver have shared this message from Linne Mooney about the British Library closures.

I wanted to warn you that because of a cyber attack, the British Library site has been down for more than two weeks. When I spoke to staff in the MSS Reading Room a few days ago they said they didn’t know when they would be able to fetch manuscripts for readers again. They may institute a system of paper request slips as we used to use in the past, but at present there is no date for when that might happen. It was apparently a serious attack and may take months to clear the malware and re-load the system. So if you were planning to spend part of the Thanksgiving holiday in the British Library, it’s best to check to see whether you’ll be able to see any manuscripts.

To stay abreast of the issue, you can check the BL’s Knowledge Matters Blog.

New Digital Resource for Chaucerians Everywhere

by Candace Barrington

A 16th-century portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer, Add MS 5141, f. 1r

The British Library has digitized its entire collection of pre-1600 manuscripts containing Chaucer’s works. The following is taken from the library’s online announcement.

The British Library holds the world’s largest surviving collection of Chaucer manuscripts, and this year we have reached a major milestone. Thanks to generous funding provided by The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Peck Stacpoole Foundation, and the American Trust for the British Library, we have completed the digitisation of all of our pre-1600 manuscripts containing Chaucer’s works, over 60 collection items in total. We have digitised not only complete copies of Chaucer’s poems, but also unique survivals, including fragmentary texts found in Middle English anthologies or inscribed in printed editions and incunabula.

You can download the full list of pre-1600 manuscripts containing Chaucer’s works here, together with accompanying links to the digitised versions on our Universal Viewer. There you can view the manuscripts in full, study them in detail, and download the images for your own use. Thanks to the IIIF-compatible viewer, you can also view these manuscripts side-by-side in digital form, allowing close comparison between the volumes, their texts, and scribal hands:

PDF: Download Chaucer_digitised_vols_Oct_2023

Excel: Download Chaucer_digitised_vols_Oct_2023 (this format cannot be downloaded on all browsers).

Go to the announcement for a complete list and illustrated descriptions of the now digitized manuscripts and incunabula.