A pair of spectacles also crop up early in the Book of Margery Kempe (though they aren't much help).

So that's at least two nuggets for a history of glasses in fifteenth-century East Anglia.

I don't know how close reading feels to other people, but my favourite parts often involve realisations along these lines: 'Oh, this bit *also* holds some interest from these two other angles…'

Not one of those, but one of the solid wooden ones that used to line the tables by the windows on the western side of the upper floor.

That's very kind of you to say, thank you! I'm delighted to hear that the book's proving useful.

Mary has kindly shared a 20% discount code for her @reaktionbooks.bsky.social biography of Chaucer, Geoffrey Chaucer: Unveiling the Merry Bard, when purchasing direct from the Reaktion Books website! You can find the discount code at the bottom of the blogpost.

Congratulations!

I wonder if Garner bothers to give the editor for PP but not for Beowulf because he's aware how much more widely witnessed and variable Piers's text is (even just within the-grouping-we-have-called-the-C-version).

If you're someone NOT planning to teach Middle English next year, have you considered buying my book—

Part of clawing my way back towards research: putting in a little bit of work helping the Index of Middle English Prose.

Given the prevalence of recipes, this's expanding my ME vocabulary. Macis! Langdebef! Stale ale, but the 'stale' part is good!