This book was originally made for Project Gutenberg. The text is the 1901 McKnight re-edition of the 1866 Lumby edition. This version includes some view options that aren’t available in Project Gutenberg format.
Introduction and Glossary
(about 100K)
King Horn
(about 450K)
Floriz and Blauncheflur
(about 250K)
The Assumption of Our Lady
(about 200K)
Each title is a free-standing file, including notes and introduction. The glossary is shared by all texts.
Options: The three titles are each edited from three MSS. You can choose to display or hide each MS. separately, and you can use color coding to distinguish the sources. In Floris and Blauncheflur and Assumption you can also show and hide the notes that go with each MS.
About the Transcription
The e-texts are intended to look as much as possible like the printed books. All brackets and parenthetical question marks are in the original. Sections using two or three MSS. will display either side-by-side or staggered, depending on the size of your browser window.
Typographical errors are marked with mouse-hover popups. The word “invisible” means that there is an appropriately sized blank space, but the letter or punctuation mark itself is missing. In the primary text, errors were corrected if they are clearly editorial, such as missing italics.
Notes and Layout
Footnotes have been numbered continuously through the Introduction, and separately for each of the three named texts. For mechanical reasons, some footnotes in the primary text will seem to be out of order. Line numbering is by multiples of 4.
Sidenotes giving leaf-and-column information were often abbreviated for space. The forms “lf.” and “bk.” have been silently regularized to “leaf” and “back”. The full word “leaf” has been supplied where missing, except in references to the Trentham MS., where it was consistently omitted in the original.
Notes were variously printed in the side margin or at the bottom of the page, depending on space constraints. They have been treated as footnotes or sidenotes according to their function: information about the text or MS. (footnote), leaf- or column numbering (sidenote), narrative summary (sidenote). Where more than one MS was used, narrative sidenotes are shown at the beginning of each group of lines.
The recurring words “No gap in MS.” are in the original; they are generally followed by one or more blank lines inserted to keep the texts parallel. The words are retained in King Horn to preserve the editor’s line numbering; in the other texts they were left out except when needed to prevent ambiguity.
Note for Teachers
These texts are in the public domain. You are welcome to download the complete set and park them in any location that is convenient for your students.