While quill and ink were the writing implements of choice in the Anglo-Saxon scriptorium, other colouring and non-colouring writing implements were in active use, too. The stylus, among them, was used on an everyday basis both for taking notes in wax tablets and for several vital steps in the creation of manuscripts. Occasionally, the stylus or perhaps even small knives were used for writing short notes that were scratched in the parchment surface without ink. One particular type of such notes encountered in manuscripts are dry-point glosses, i.e. short explanatory remarks that provide a translation or a clue for a lexical or syntactic difficulty of the Latin text. The present study provides a comprehensive overview of the known corpus of dry-point glosses in Old English by cataloguing the 34 manuscripts that are currently known to contain such glosses. A first general descriptive analysis of the corpus of Old English dry-point glosses is provided and their difficult visual appearance is discussed with respect to the theoretical and practical implications for their future study.

This catalogue is a state-of-knowledge list of the English written between c 1150 and 1300, whether later versions of Old English texts or original early Middle English. With over 500 entries relating to manuscripts containing writing in English, it describes in detail literary material, both prose and verse, documentary texts, and glosses. The catalogue draws together an extensive body of information only available up to now from widely scattered sources. As well as being listed by their repositories, the manuscripts are also separately indexed by text. Information is provided on dates, hands, manuscript associations and language. Also given are references to editions and secondary literature.

Volumes for 1898-1968 include a directory of publishers.

This new edition presents three odes to saints in alliterative and stanzaic form, composed in the north and east Midlands around 1400. The hymns address St. Katherine of Alexandria (from Bodley Rolls 22), St. John the Evangelist (Lincoln Cathedral Library MS91), and St. John the Baptist (British Library, MS Additional 39574). The edition contains a full account of extensive recent scholarship on the Middle English alliterative verse tradition, as well as the hymns' hagiographical and historical context.