AN ANNOTATED EDITION OF CHAUCER BELONGING TO STEPHAN BATMAN

摘要

THIS NOTE INTRODUCES A COPY OF The Woorkes of Geffrey Chaucer (1561; STC 5076) formerly belonging to the writer, cleric, limner, and book-collector Stephan Batman (c. 1542-1584). The volume is currently held at the Guildhall Library in London, where it has the shelf-mark SR 2.3.3. The words 'Stephanus Batmanus | me possidet' are written beneath the edition's colophon in Batman's cursive italic hand (sig. 3V8V), along with a short booklist of medieval chronicles. The volume's ownership inscription has been recorded by a Guildhall Library cataloguer on a typewritten pastedown, but scholars interested in Batman's career have not hitherto noted the book's existence. There is also a poem of twenty-eight lines written on the rear flyleaf in Batman's secretary hand, and at around seventy locations throughout the edition there are annotations, manicules, marginal markings, and line drawings. The preponderance of the written annotations and manicules are in Batman's hand, and demonstrate some of his varied responses to Chaucer's collected works.