This edition of Capgrave's {Life of
St Augustine} is found in a unique ME manuscript, BL Addit. 36704,
written about 1451. This diplomatic transcription expands
Capgrave's abbreviations and includes modern punctuation,
capitalization, word-division and paragraph breaks. Further, the
extensive glossary makes the edition accessible to readers whose
knowledge of ME may be elementary. The volume also includes an edition
of Jordanus's autograph copy of the {Vita} (Paris, Bibl. de
l'Arsenal, MS 251), which allows for a detailed study of
Capgrave's methods of translation - at times word-for-word, at
others allowing scope for omission, digression, expansion and the
inclusion of local colour and relevant exempla. The bibliography
includes the most recent studies of Capgrave, whose work is enjoying a
revival because of the unusual number of extant autograph MSS in his
corpus, and also because of his evident interest in a female readership
(reflected not only in this work but in his {Life of St Katharine}), a
manifestation of the rise of literate lay women in the fifteenth
century. Capgrave's {Life} provides a detailed and very human
representation of Augustine, his friends, and his formidable mother,
Monica. This volume will also be of interest to those who are studying
Capgrave's language; because the manuscript is an autograph and is
also corrected with evident care by Capgrave himself. It provides rare
evidence for the language of King's Lynn, Norfolk, in an age when
the London dialect was beoming 'received standard'. The
edition's introduction provides basic information about
Capgrave's own life and the body of his work; a description of the
MS and of Capgrave's language; a consideration of his alterations
made to his main source - Jordanus of Saxony's {Vita s. Augustini}
- evidently in order to make the text more attractive to the
'gentill woman' at whose request he prepared the life.