Output details

The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles : Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester

The first volume comprises a 189-page study of two chronicles and their significance and a set of historical and textual commentaries (150-pages); the second volume contains critical editions with facing-page translations (350 pages). Julian Harrison transcribed most of the Winchcombe Chronicle; the primary author Paul Hayward used source criticism to repair the many gaps caused by fire damage to the manuscript (Tiberius E.IV); he corrected and translated the text. Having discovered the Coventry Chronicles, a hitherto wholly unknown text, Hayward transcribed, edited and translated it. He researched and wrote the study and the commentaries; he also compiled the 50-page index.

790 pages in length, the Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles is a critical edition of two hitherto almost entirely unknown medieval chronicles and an interdisciplinary study/monograph that defines a particular type of historical practice and its relationship to the medieval science known as ‘computus’. Four ancient languages figure here: Latin, Anglo-Norman French and both Old and Middle English. The study and commentaries also engage with the findings of much secondary literature in English, French, and German. The whole rests on the close study of more than 107 medieval manuscripts, including several that had to be reconstructed owing to extensive fire damage.