The Arthurian Texts of the Percy Folio

The ’Percy Folio’ (BL MS Add. 27879), a seventeenth-century miscellany of ballads, romances and songs is a highly significant document in English poetry. It was crucial to the success and credibility of Bishop Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). A best-seller that inspired many including Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott, the Reliques made ballads a subject worthy of study and respect, in no small part due to the supposed antiquity of the Folio’s contents, Percy even claiming that one Arthurian piece was known to Chaucer.

For the first time ever this volume publishes critical editions of all eleven Arthurian texts in the Percy Folio, with transcriptions taken directly from BL MS Add. 27879. The book opens with a discussion of the manuscript’s history and ownership, the place of these Arthurian texts within a ballad tradition, attitudes to King Arthur up to the early eighteenth century, and Percy’s interest in and knowledge of Arthurian legend. A particular focus has been the role played by performance in the evolution of the Arthurian material. Each text is prefaced by a Headnote with endnotes, references to previous editions, and suggestions for further reading. The texts themselves are complemented by Explanatory Notes for the reader, and Textual Notes which include transcripts of Percy’s own annotations. The book concludes with a comprehensive bibliography.

Contributors: John Withrington, Gillian Rogers, Elizabeth Darovic, Maldwyn Mills, Raluca Radulescu, Diane Speed, Marion Trudgill and Elizabeth Williams.

Gillian Rogers was formerly the English Faculty Librarian in the University of Cambridge. She has published articles on the Percy Folio MS, Golagros and Gawain, The Grene Knyght, and contributed the chapter on ’Folk Romance’ in The Arthur of the English (ed. W. R. J. Barron, University of Wales Press 1999).

John Withrington is an independent scholar specialising in Arthurian literature. He is the author of articles and chapters on this topic, including contributions to The Arthur of the English and the definitive Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.