Selim 20.indb Ivalla Ortega-Barrera, SELIM 20 (2013–2014): 291–295ISSN: 1132–631X Calle-Martín, Javier & Miguel Ángel Castaño-Gil 2013. A Late Middle English Remedy-book (MS Wellcome 542, ff . 1r–20v). A Scholarly Edition (Late Middle English Texts 5.) Peter Lang AG, Bern. pp. 183. ISBN: 3-0343-1369-⒈ A LATE MIDDLE ENGLISH REMEDY-BOOK (MS WELLCOME 542, ff . 1r–20v) A Scholarly Edition. Late Middle English Texts 5. Peter Lang AG, Bern is number 5 in the collection Late Middle English Texts (LMET) series. This series publishes scientifi c manuscripts and early prints covering a study of their palaeographic and language features, as it is shown in this number under study, which includes the transcription of a medieval remedy-book (MS Wellcome 542, ff . 1r–20v). The present volume is organised in four diff erent chapters, namely “The Manuscript,” “The Language,” “The Text” and “The Glossary.” The work has been prefaced by medievalist and linguist Irma Taavitsainen. The preface, “Recipes in Middle English Medical Literature,” emphasises the importance of editing manuscripts and gives the current state of the art of editing Middle English medical recipes, clarify ing the importance of non-literary texts and, at the same time, explaining the meaning of recipes. Taavitsainen’s contribution to the book is very signifi cant. She herself has been the author of several articles dealing with recipes both fr om a linguistic and a cultural perspective (Taavitsainen, 2001; Taavitsainen & Pahta 2004, among others). Recipes are defi ned as belonging to utilitarian literature as they “give instructions on how to prepare medicines to cure an illness, how to maintain health or prevent a harmful condition” (p. 13). Taavitsainen also deals briefl y with the diff erent electronic catalogues that exist concerning medical texts, emphasising the usefulness of these resources. In her conclusion, she presents this edition as one further step in linguistics and philological studies since it is a contribution to the material available to scholars and researchers. Ivalla Ortega-Barrera 292SELIM 20 (2013–2014) The fi rst chapter (“The Manuscript”) provides an analysis of the contents of the manuscript, listing other manuscripts with the same contents, which are the prologue, charms and other medical formulae. The authors also give information about the owners, presenting a brief biography of each one, and the way the manuscript was acquired, and the parallel manuscripts, which are a total of 21 copies. The writers explain why they use the term remedy-book to refer to this manuscript and that is because it contains “a collection of recipes including charms, but not a fully developed ‘treatise on bloodletting or urines’ (Keiser 1988: 3365)” (p. 20). In the absence of further considerations, I think the category works well for the volume as it resembles other remedy books in the line of the ones edited in Odgen (1938) and, more recently, Alonso-Almeida (2014). The second part of this fi rst chapter analyses the codicological aspects, such as material, dimensions and ink, quiring and collation, ruling, foliation, binding and fl y-leaves. The manuscript has been written in a quarto size vellum. The black ink is the most used, although the red ink also appears fr equently. The text is written in 119 folios, which “present a modern foliation at the top right-hand corner of every folio recto” (p. 29). In this case, more information about collation is badly needed here because the only reference to the manuscripts that can be compared with MS Wellcome 542, ff . 1r–20v, seems to be the listing of 21 parallel manuscripts, but with no further reference or any comparison among these evidences. This collation would greatly benefi t the edition but the authors, I guess, may undertake this as future research prospects. There is a paleographical analysis in which the authors off er the diff erent letterforms found in the manuscript. In this vein, the writers, following Denholm-Young 1954, Hector 1966, and Petti 1977, establish that the letter used is a mixture between the 14th century Anglicana and the 15th century Secretary and include a description of the section titles, which are visually identifi able since they are with a “bigger size written in red ink” (p. 32); numerals, which are Roman fi gures; punctuation marks (punctus, punctus Reviews 293 SELIM 20 (2013–2014) elevatus and the hyphen); and abbreviations used in the original manuscript. The abbreviations used are contraction, suspension, superior letters, and brevigraphs. The second chapter, “The Language,” comprises the study of the provenance of the manuscript and the description of the infl ections found in the diff erent word classes that are used in the manuscript. To determine the origin of the manuscript, the authors have made a dialectal localisation of the manuscript using the fi t-technique, and they have concluded that its provenance is in the county of Norfolk, in a neighbouring area with Cambridge. Aft er this, a morphological study is presented. The description of the infl ections used by the scribe and the number of occurrences of each one are provided. In this sense, although the number of instances per infl ection is given, there is no reference to the precise location of each case in the text, so the reader cannot fi nd the examples in the text unless he/she conducts an exhaustive analysis. I wonder, however, whether this information is of real value but, if so, a detail description would have been very welcome. The third chapter, “The Text,” presents the editorial guidelines followed by the authors, who have used a semi-diplomatic edition adapting some guidelines fr om Petti (1977). The authors have maintained the original spelling, with double 〈ff 〉 transcribed as 〈F〉, and the capital letters at the beginning of each epigraph appear in square brackets. Punctuation does not undergo any alteration and abbreviations have been expanded with the supplied letter in italics. Thus, insertions have been reproduced as 〈t/e/ye〉, and marginalia have been included in the textual apparatus. Following this, there is a digitised image of f. 3v of the manuscript and then the transcription starts. In the transcription, the reader can fi nd the diff erent recipes at a glance. The authors have provided editorial line numbers. The fourth chapter, “The Glossary,” off ers a “selected glossary of the Middle English terms found in MS Wellcome 542” (p. 123), without including Latinate terms. This glossary presents the Ivalla Ortega-Barrera 294SELIM 20 (2013–2014) entries followed by their word class. For this glossary, the e-MED and the Oxford English Dictionary have been used. The allomorphs and their occurrences have been included in this glossary. In this case, it would have been valuable if the authors had included their localisation in the text to take into account the study of diff erent variations in context. The inclusion of Latinate terms would be also an appreciated aspect to be considered as the authors claim that the glossary is an aid for a better understanding of the edited text. At the end, the authors give the list of references. This list represents a good deal of the literature written in the topic, and the references are reasonably updated. There are, however, some missing references in the literature, which should be added. Note, for instance, that Carrillo-Linares’s (2006) and Garrido-Anes’s (2004) works on medical texts have not been mentioned, not even as part of the description of earlier literature. All in all, this book can be considered as an outstanding contribution to editorial work in the fi eld of early scientifi c medical manuscripts. These editions can be later used to implement databases of earlier English texts. These compilations would be useful not only for linguists for obvious reasons, but also for students who want to start their professions as philologists. Its internal organisation into the diff erent chapters, even if too concise (between 8–10 pages), makes the book very practical and easy to read and use, emphasising the edition and the glossary as the main and longest parts of the book. Ivalla Ortega-Barrera Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Reviews 295 SELIM 20 (2013–2014) References Alonso-Almeida, F. 2014: A Middle English Medical Remedy Book. Edited fr om Glasgow University Library Hunter 185. (Middle English Text Series 50.) Heidelberg, Carl Winter. Carrillo-Linares, M. J. 2006: “De Humana Natura.” In M. T. Tavormina (ed.) Sex, Aging and Death in a Medieval Medical Compendium: Trinity College Cambridge R.14.52, its Texts, Language and Scribe. Tempe, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 292: 253–269. Denholm-Young, N. 1954: Handwriting in England and Wales. Cardiff , University of Wales Press. Garrido-Anes, E. 2004: Transmisión, vernacularización y usos del Liber de Simplici Medicina: las versiones del Circa Instans en inglés medio. Medicina & historia. Revista de estudios históricos de las ciencias médicas 2: 1–15. Hector, L. C. 1966: The Handwriting of English Documents. London, Edward Arnold. Ogden, M. S. (ed.) 1938: The “Liber de diversis medicinis” in the Thornton Manuscript (MS. Lincoln Cathedral A.5.2). (E.E.T.S. O.S. 207.) London, Oxford University Press. Petti, A. G. 1977: English Literary Hands fr om Chaucer to Dryden. Cambrige (MA), Harvard University Press. Taavitsainen, I. 2001: Middle English Recipes: Genre Characteristics, Text Type Features and Underlying Traditions of Writing. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 2.1:85–113. Taavitsainen, I & P. Pahta (eds.) 2004: Medical Writing in Early Modern English. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. •