page_title: Auchinleck manuscript
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Auchinleck manuscript / Production
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Auchinleck manuscript, folio 34r.
context_page_description: The Auchinleck Manuscript, NLS Adv. MS 19.2.1, currently forms part of the collection of the National Library of Scotland. It is an illuminated manuscript copied on parchment in the 14th century in London. The manuscript provides a glimpse of a time of political tension and social change in England. The English were continuing to reclaim their language and national identity, and to distance themselves from the Norman conquerors who had taken over the country after the Battle of Hastings 300 years before.
context_section_description: Auchinleck is believed to have been produced in London around 1340 by professional scribes who were laymen, not by monks, as was more usually the case with medieval manuscript texts. There is debate among scholars of Middle English, both as to how many scribes were involved in the production and writing-out of the text, and also as to whether they were merely copying the work from the original or exemplar, or were at the same time translating the works from French or Latin, rendering them incidentally into their own Middle English dialects.  
  Through the use of palaeography (the study of ancient handwriting), it has been determined that there had to be at least four, perhaps five, different scribes. Some scholars have argued that there were six scribes, yet most agree that the majority of the manuscript is in the hand of one man, who it is believed translated most of the literature. With this knowledge, when one looks at the photographs of the manuscript found on the website of the National Library of Scotland, it is easy to see the discrepancies in the actual handwriting of the scribes. Some is tight and regimented, attributed to Scribe 1, while some is more loosely written, as if the scribe did not make the correct adjustments for space and repeatedly ran out of room at the ends of the lines. While this has an entertaining visual effect when looking at the folios, or pages, its historical importance lies in the clues that it gives to the process of book production for private clients in a secular bookshop at an early period in the emergence of that industry.
caption: A page from the manuscript.
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