Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-lvwk9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-05T08:16:56.805Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

16 - Chambers 1935–1942

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2009

Charlotte Brewer
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

In 1935 Chambers published a biography of Thomas More, indicating that his productivity in some respects continued apace. But still he doggedly returned to Piers Plowman. In the same year the Huntington Library funded a trip to San Marino, California to examine its manuscripts, where Chambers worked closely with the librarian, R. B. Haselden, and produced an important article on the library's Piers Plowman manuscripts, identifying Hm 143, the manuscript he had looked at when it came on to the market in 1924 (see p. 254 above), as the most valuable of the C-Text manuscripts. This was swift, efficient, and productive work; presumably he was highly stimulated by the change in scene. Max Ferrand, a Director of the Huntington Library, wrote affectionately to him some years later: ‘Your visit to San Marino was one of the most satisfactory of all our visiting scholars – because you cleared up your job.’ And he goes on to say, somewhat over-optimistically as poor Chambers must have felt, ‘It is to be hoped that when the war is over, the several texts of Piers Plowman will be published and that work of scholarship cleared off for a generation or two.’ But the important finding of Chambers' study, that Hm 143 was the most significant extant C-MS, merely underlined the depressing unpredictability of Piers Plowman textual work. The two graduate students, Allen and Carnegy, who had been set to work on the C-Text in order to clear the ground for the A-Text, had analysed the manuscripts in ignorance of Hm 143.

Type
Chapter
Information
Editing Piers Plowman
The Evolution of the Text
, pp. 284 - 302
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Chambers 1935–1942
  • Charlotte Brewer, University of Oxford
  • Book: Editing Piers Plowman
  • Online publication: 20 August 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511518690.018
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Chambers 1935–1942
  • Charlotte Brewer, University of Oxford
  • Book: Editing Piers Plowman
  • Online publication: 20 August 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511518690.018
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Chambers 1935–1942
  • Charlotte Brewer, University of Oxford
  • Book: Editing Piers Plowman
  • Online publication: 20 August 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511518690.018
Available formats
×