University of Virginia Library

In Speculum for January 1969 Robert E. Nichols, Jr., publishing transcriptions of manuscripts of Chaucer's Fortune, Truth, and Gentilesse, remarks: "the following transcriptions . . . are probably not only the last unpublished manuscript versions of the three works, but the final unpublished manuscripts of Chaucer's Short Poems."[1] Professor Nichols subtitles his article: "The 'Last' Unpublished Manuscript Transcriptions." Ironically, at the very time the article came out Norman Davis published his transcription of a newly discovered manuscript of Gentilesse (Nottingham MS.),[2] and in the previous year we noted the existence of an unpublished copy of Truth in the same manuscript and of the A B C in the Melbourne MS[3]. We do not say that the transcriptions we publish in this paper are the final transcriptions. We do say that they are the principal unpublished manuscripts of the Short Poems known to us which we consider definitely worth publishing (but see section V below).

A manuscript of these poems is worth publishing if it can be called "a genuine witness" (Davis's phrase; p. 46); that is, if it is a valid manuscript, not, say, a mere copy of some early printed text.[4] In the 19th century the Chaucer Society published transcriptions of nearly all of the manuscripts of Chaucer's Short Poems. Since then Chaucerians have kept adding to the collection so that we now have in print for these poems a corpus scriptorum which is perhaps unique in medieval English literature. Of what other group of poems extant

in a large number of manuscripts, even poems by Chaucer, can it be said: all the manuscript evidence is available for the student?

In this paper we publish transcriptions of the version of the A B C in the Melbourne MS. (State Library of Victoria, Felton Bequest, Deguileville in English), of Truth in the Nottingham University Library MS. ME LM 1 (Mellish), and of Against Women Unconstant (probably by Chaucer)[5] in Fairfax 16, Bodleian.[6] None has been published before; the Fairfax copy is the best version of that poem. In parts I-III we comment on the manuscripts themselves; in part IV we give the transcriptions along with brief statements of textual affiliations; in part V we list additional unpublished manuscripts of the Short Poems and also early printed copies with claim to manuscript authority.

Parts I-III are by A. I. Doyle. This introduction and parts IV-V are by George B. Pace.