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Sir Israel Gollancz and the editorial history of the Pearl Manuscript
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This paper will survey the relationship between one of the most important codices of Middle English poetry, the Pearl Manuscript (BL MS Cotton Nero A.x., Art. 3), and one of this manuscript's most eminent editors and scholars, Sir Israel Gollancz. The aim of this survey is to describe the evolution of Gollancz's views on the codex containing Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Gawain and the Green Knight and to explore the ways that his views have shaped modern critical perspectives on the Pearl texts and their unique surviving manuscript.
The Dictionary of National Biography reports that Gollancz was educated at the City of London School, at University College, London, and at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he completed a degree in medieval and modern languages in 1887. The broad outlines of his subsequent career are easily summarized. After obtaining his degree from Cambridge, Gollancz lectured there until being named Quain English student and lecturer at University College, London, in 1892. In 1896, he was appointed as the first lecturer in English at Cambridge and then, in 1905, assumed the post of chair of English language and literature at King's College, London University; this post he held until his death in 1930. A doctorate in letters was conferred upon him by Cambridge in 1906 and he was knighted for his scholarly achievements in 1919. He served as an honorary director of the Early English Text Society, as president of the Philological Society, and was a founder of the British Academy.
Interestingly, the year of Gollancz's birth (1864) was also the date of publication for the second modern edition of the text of Gawain and for the first modern texts of the other three Pearl poems (in a volume titled Early English Alliterative Poems). The editor of these editions, Richard Morris, was the first...