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Information about this book was provided by its publisher in 2011. The description given is not an independent review. All details are subject to change, especially pricing. Please use the contact links at the top of this page to notify any innacuracy.

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John Mirk; Susan Powell, ed.
John Mirk's Festial, Edited from British Library MS Cotton Claudius A. II, Volume 2.
Publisher: Early English text Society.
Series: Original Series 335.
Publication due: August 2011.
Size: 216x138mm.
Page count: 600pp.
Illustrations: 2 black & white photographs.

Publisher's recommended price
Hardback ISBN 9780199590377, £70.00

Description:

- New edition of enormously influential medieval English sermon collection

- Volume 2 completes the edition and contains the remainder of the text, full explanatory notes, and a glossary

The Festial, most probably composed in the late 1380s by the Augustinian canon, John Mirk, of Lilleshall Abbey, Shropshire, was the most popular and influential collection of sermons in English in the late medieval and early Tudor period, surviving in many copies, and printed by Caxton and his successors. The collection was designed to be accessible and entertaining, as well as orthodox, to counter the success of Lollard preaching, and taught both the priests who used the sermons, as well as their audiences, the fundamentals of the Christian faith and doctrine, illustrated by many stories. The Festial is the only English sermon collection to be printed in England before the Reformation and is probably the most frequently printed work of its time before religious change made it unacceptable.

Readership: Students and scholars of medieval English literature and history.