The ‘Percy Folio’ (BL MS Add. 27879), a seventeenth-century miscellany of ballads, romances and songs is a highly significant document in English poetry. It was crucial to the success and credibility of Bishop Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). A best-seller that inspired many including Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott, the Reliques made ballads a subject worthy of study and respect, in no small part due to the supposed antiquity of the Folio’s contents, Percy even claiming that one Arthurian piece was known to Chaucer.
For the first time ever this volume publishes critical editions of all eleven Arthurian texts in the Percy Folio, with transcriptions taken directly from BL MS Add. 27879. The book opens with a discussion of the manuscript’s history and ownership, the place of these Arthurian texts within a ballad tradition, attitudes to King Arthur up to the early eighteenth century, and Percy’s interest in and knowledge of Arthurian legend. A particular focus has been the role played by performance in the evolution of the Arthurian material. Each text is prefaced by a Headnote with endnotes, references to previous editions, and suggestions for further reading. The texts themselves are complemented by Explanatory Notes for the reader, and Textual Notes which include transcripts of Percy’s own annotations. The book concludes with a comprehensive bibliography.
Contributors: John Withrington, Gillian Rogers, Elizabeth Darovic, Maldwyn Mills, Raluca Radulescu, Diane Speed, Marion Trudgill and Elizabeth Williams.
Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION
The Manuscript
Discovery of the Manuscript
Contents and Date
The Scribe/Compiler at work
The Scribe/Compiler: background and identity
The Scribe/Compiler: sources and composition
Percy’s Annotations
The Arthurian texts in the Percy Folio
Assembling the Reliques
‘This vague and indiscriminating name’
A Matter of Taste
‘This Tale Grew in the Telling’
Conclusion
The Arthurian background
King Arthur as an Historical Figure
Enlisting the Arthurian Legend
The Arthurian Legend in Literature and Prophecy
Percy and the Arthurian Legend
Previous editions and methodology adopted for this edition
Appendix and Endnotes
THE TEXTS
King Arthur and King Cornwall
Sir Lancelott of Dulake
The Turke & Gowin
The Marriage of Sir Gawaine
Sir Lambewell
Merline
Kinge Arthurs Death
The Grene Knyght
Boy and Mantle
Libius Disconius
Carle off Carlile
Bibliography
About the Author :
John Withrington is an independent scholar specialising in Arthurian literature. He is the author of articles and chapters on this topic, including contributions to The Arthur of the English and the definitive Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Gillian Rogers was formerly the English Faculty Librarian in the University of Cambridge. She has published articles on the Percy Folio MS, Golagros and Gawain, The Grene Knyght, and contributed the chapter on ‘Folk Romance’ in The Arthur of the English (ed. W. R. J. Barron, University of Wales Press 1999).
Review :
'This book is a welcome addition to the texts available to modern scholars of original Arthurian material... [It has] an almost detective-story charm without damaging in the least the reader's respect for the broad and careful scholarship accompanying each and every poem in the book...Withrington's edition, with the expert work of the impressive co-editors, deserves to be on every medievalist's shelves.' Theresa M. Kenney, Arthuriana, Volume 35, Number 1, Spring 2025
‘Will be useful to all students of the romantic and Victorian periods as well as medievalists…. Succeeds admirably in the volume’s stated aim ‘to appeal to the general reader as well as to the scholar, and to provide context’. Withrington's edition, with the expert work of the impressive co-editors, deserves to be on every medievalist's shelves.’ Theresa M. Kenney, Arthuriana, Volume 35, Number 1, Spring 2025
