The Findern Manuscript: A New Edition of the Unique Poems. Ed. Joanna M. Martin (Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020.

• Helen Cooper

The Findern Manuscript (Cambridge University Library MS Ff.1.6) has been well studied over the past few decades, and most of its poems anthologized for even longer. Some are extracts from major authors including Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate; many of the shorter items that are not by familiar names appear in other manuscripts too. What might be regarded as one of the few remaining gaps in the scholarship is an edition of the thirty-four poems that appear only in Findern: a gap now filled by Joanna Martin’s edition. The ‘unique’ of the book’s title therefore means ‘not attested in other manuscripts’, not that these poems have not previously been published. A complete facsimile edited by Richard Beadle and A. E. B. Owen appeared in 1977; all have appeared widely scattered over a range of anthologies and articles or as part of longer poems; and, overlooked by Martin, in 2014 Julie Tanner edited them for an M.Res. thesis at Birmingham, though her definition of ‘unique’ varies slightly from Martin’s. Some of the poems offer combinations of Chaucer, Lydgate and other well known poets, so although lines or stanzas may be familiar, the resulting mixture is original to this manuscript.