This volume provides a combined index to the first 20 volumes of Index of Middle English Prose. In the absence of a searchable electronic database version of this series, it will be an essential tool for all researchers in this area. Indexes of incipits and excipits are provided, together with author and title indexes and general subject indexes.
The project to publish a complete listing of all known manuscript items containing Middle English prose began in 1978, and the first volume appeared in 1984. The final listing will consist of some fifty volumes; with the publication of the twentieth volume in 2009, the corpus was sufficiently extensive to justify the first comprehensive index to the contents of the existing titles. This, the resulting volume, is a vital research tool for anyone working with Middle English prose texts. It is designed to give immediate access to the indices now found separately in the first twenty descriptive manuscript catalogues and begins with a summary contents list for each of these. In additionto an index of first lines, the volume contains other finding aids in the form of an index of rubrics and titles, and a general index. This will enable scholars to quickly find all surviving manuscript copies of a particular textin the collections catalogued to date, and will form the basis of future index volumes.
KARI ANNE RAND is Professor of Older English Language at the University of Oslo.
