EXETER

See also:

• BOOK

BOOK [Codex Exoniensis]  , an anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry presented to Exeter cathedral by Leofric,' bishop of Exeter, England, from 1050 to 1071, and still in the possession of the dean and chapter . It contains some legal documents, the poems entitled Crist, Guthlac, Phoenix, Juliana, The Wanderer and others, and concludes with between eighty and ninety riddles . It was first described in Humphrey Wanley's Catalogus .. (1705) in detail but with many inaccuracies; subsequently by J . J . Conybeare, Account of a Saxon Manuscript (a paper read in 1812; printed with some extracts from the MS. in Archaeologia, vol. xvii. pp . 18o-197, 1814) . A complete transcript made (1831) by Robert Chambers is in the British Museum (Addit . MS . 9067) . It was first printed in 1842 by Benjamin Thorpe for the Soc. of Antiq., London, as Codex Exoniensis . . . with an English Translation, Notes and Indexes .

More

recent editions, chiefly based on Thorpe's text, are:—in Chr . Grein's Bibliothek der A.S . Poesie (vol. iii. part 1, ed . R . Wiilker, Leipzig, 1897, with a bibliography), J . Schipper in Pfeiffer's Germania, vol. xix. pp . 327-339, and Israel Gollancz, The Exeter Book, pt. i . (1895), with English translation, for the Early English Text Society . A detailed account, with bibliographies of the 'separate poems, is given by R . Walker, in Grundriss ... der A.S . Literatur, pp . 218-236 (Leipzig, 1885) ; see also the introduction to The Crist of Cynewulf ...

, edited by Prof . A . S .

Cook, with introduction, notes and a glossary (Boston, U.S.A., 1900) . For the poems contained in the MS. see alSO CYNEWULF and RIDDLES .