Middle English Vocabulary

The bibliography of A Middle English Vocabulary is necessarily complicated because Oxford University Press bound copies of the sheets as needed. This led to sheets of the first printing being bound with different advertisements and different wrappers, when they were bound as a separate publication (some were bound up with Kenneth Sisam's Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose). Also, no copies are marked as "first printing" or the like, so one has to identify them according to the number of ornaments on the upper cover and dates and other features of added advertisements and the wrappers, and to note the features of the deposit copies in the British Library and Bodleian Library, which are presumably from the first publication.

In the Bibliography I describe the first printing and three binding variants of which I was aware. I then describe two copies I presume to be later than those three, by virtue of the rubber-stamped line "PRINTED IN ENGLAND" (all caps); and a later printing, clearly so as "Printed in England" (upper and lower case) is set in type. Because your copy A has a line of this sort on the title-page, it's presumably a later issue or printing. The heading of the advertisements in copy A would suggest this too, as all copies of the first printing (as I identify it) have "EARLY AND MIDDLE ENGLISH" (all caps). (I don't recall having seen any with just "Middle English".) Your copy B has some of the points I associate with the first printing, binding variant 1.

Wayne

Thank you for that, Wayne - it clarifies the issue.

- wellinghall