ABSTRACT
In his dissertation on the Middle English Lyric and in a number of his published articles Professor Robbins has shown how the selection of contents, the physical form and the subsequent alterations of manuscripts, especially anthologies of verse, may indicate the character and interests of the compilers and owners. It seems most appropriate to offer some observations on the two largest Middle English anthologies of verse and prose, the Vernon and Simeon manuscripts, so frequently employed by editors, yet rarely discussed as a whole except incidentally and summarily. A multiply-related manuscript indicative of the common source, although not apparently from the same exemplar, is British Museum MS Addit.37787, a collection of Latin, English, and French by John Northwood, a Cistercian of Bordesley, made sometime after 1386–1388. In Beatrice Daw Brown’s words, “the scribe of the Vernon Manuscript was addicted to tinkering with the texts that came into his hands.”
