The Romance of Alexander

Flanders (Bruges?), circa 1340
Gothic script

The Bodleian Library, Oxford (Great Britain)
Ms. Bodley 264

Date of Publication of the Facsimile: 1933
Publisher: The Clarendon Press, Oxford (Great Britain), Oxford University Press, London (Great Britain)
Printer: John Johnson, Printer to the University, at the Oxford University Press, London (Great Britain)
Overseer of the Production:Owen Holloway, Senior Assistant in the Bodleian

The original manuscript contains French and English Alexander romances in verse, and an account in French of the Voyages of Marco Polo. Wonderful voyages and the marvels seen on the way were clearly the theme of this magnificent manuscript. The facsimile reproduces the Romance of the Good King Alexander by Lambert li Tors, written in the dialect of Picardie.

While the subtle gradations produced by collotype may hint at the richness of the coloring of the original, this process was so costly for color reproduction that only four of the numerous illuminated folios could be reproduced in this way (and only with the help of explicitly acknowledged private donations for the purpose). Unfortunately for the purpose of this particular section, which concentrates on medieval copies of the text of vernacular works, the collotype reproduction of a colored image could only be done on a separate sheet of special paper. As a result, in this facsimile, the color reproductions are not bound facing the corresponding text.

Locheimer Liederbuch

Ellesmere Chaucer