Review of 'English Writers of the Late Middle Ages' (Authors of the Middle Ages, Vol. III, 7-11), ed. M. C. Seymour: No 7, N. F. Blake, 'William Caxton'; No.8, Wendy Sease, 'Reginald Pecock'; No.9, Douglas Gray, 'William Dunbar'; No. 10, Douglas Gray, 'Robert Henryson'; No. II, M. C. Seymour, 'John Capgrave', Aldershot, Variorum, 1996; board; pp. 256; R.R.P. £39.50.

Abstract

This compact book, essentially a reference volume, in the laudable series, 'English Writers of the Late Middle Ages', from Variorum is a laminated boards collection of what would otherwise be five slim monographs. They follow on the numbered earlier volumes - of literary criticism; of bibliography; and on Mandeville, Trevisa, Langland, and Hoccleve. Thus, being parts of a most comprehensive and inter-related series, they have a lean format, including: known details of the man and his life; an appendix containing relevant documents; and a bibliography in sections. The whole is edited by M. C. Seymour, as are the parts, the latter also having an additional pagination for their use separately. Before considering these discrete parts, it may be appropriate to compare their more sober tone and much more substantial scholarly apparatus to the hitherto standard reference volume H. S. Bennett's 'Chaucer and the Fifteenth Century' (1947). That charming companion volume now seems redolent of the impressionistic scholarship of a much earlier day.