Main URL

parker.stanford.edu/parker

Description

The Parker Library contains key Anglo-Norman and Middle English texts ranging from the Ancrene Wisse and the Brut Chronicle to one of the finest copies of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. Other subjects represented in the collection are theology, music, medieval travelogues and maps, apocalypses, bestiaries, royal ceremonies, historical chronicles and Bibles. The Parker Library holds a magnificent collection of English illuminated manuscripts. Over several centuries, scholars have mined the collections to generate seminal scholarship in a huge range of disciplines.

Parker Library on the Web presents a high-resolution digital copy of every imageable page of most manuscripts in the Parker Library. The images are accompanied by detailed manuscript descriptions.

Scope

This resource is of particular interest to scholars in manuscript studies and religious, literary and cultural history.

All users of the site can browse the catalogue by manuscript number or title and view the 200,000 page images, and use a set of site tutorials and glossary. Search options for subscription users only include keyword, manuscript number, title, provenance and decoration. Subscription users also have access to higher quality images and image manipulation features and to bibliographical information.

The full text of manuscripts is not searchable. The majority of the 559 manuscript descriptions are based on an early 20th-century catalogue of the Parker Library, supplemented with additional information from more recent catalogues. No attempt was made to provide a definitive verification of all the information in the printed catalogues, but authors and titles were verified and updated foliation statements, measurements, and other additions where relevant, were provided.

Introductory reading

Graham, T. 'Matthew Parker's manuscripts: an Elizabethan library and its use', in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, Volume 1: To 1640, ed. by E. Leedham-Green and T. Webber. Cambridge, 2006.

Page, R. I. Matthew Parker and his Books. Kalamazoo, MI, 1993.

Technical Methods

The project produced XML-encoded versions of the printed catalogues, with some expanded or corrected information.

Further information

About the project

Parker on the Web is a joint undertaking of Corpus Christi College, the Stanford University Libraries and Cambridge University Library. The project was generously supported by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Grants were also received from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

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