MS. Selden Supra 56

Binding

Plain white sheepskin parchment on boards, clasp lost, contemporary English work (fifteenth century)

Alexandra Gillespie observes that very few well-known vernacular manuscripts have survived in their medieval bindings and that MS. Selden Supra 56 is one of only four of Chaucer’s works that has a pre-1500 cover. Gillespie names the other three Chaucer manuscripts as MS. Rawl. D. 3, Cambridge, St John’s, MS E. 2 and London, Institution of Engineering and Technology Library, MS Thompson 1 ('Bookbinding' in The Production of Books in England 1350–1500 ed. by Wakelin and Gillespie [Cambridge University Press, 2011], p. 158 and p. 165)

Hannah Ryley notes that reinforcing strips were used in this manuscript to strengthen the binding by offering support to the sewing of the quires. Ryley comments that from the reader’s point of view, these reinforcing strips are 'narrow stubs poking out from between regular leaves' and that the 'stubby strips either lie flat, because they have been pasted on to adjacent leaves, or they stand up separately'. Ryley records strips at fols 6–7, 20–21, 34-35, 48–49, 62–63, 76–77, 90–91 and 103–04, with strips adhered to fols 90–91 (Re-using Manuscripts in Late Medieval England: Repairing, Recycling, Sharing [Boydell & Brewer, 2022], p. 75). Ryley cites MS. Rawl. poet. 163 as another example of reinforcing strips in a manuscript of Troilus and Criseyde

These strips are made from what Ryley terms 'recycled material' and evidence of this is that they have traces of writing on them. Although the writing on the strips is barely legible, Ryley postulates that the strips are taken from a document of some sort, most likely from the 15th century; the date assigned by Ryley would make the recycyled document roughly contemporary with the manuscript itself. Ryley hazards that the strips on fols 14-15 may contain the name ‘John’ (Re-using Manuscripts in Late Medieval England [Boydell & Brewer, 2022], p. 76)