Known familiarly as the ‘Audley End Lydgate’, the mid-15th century vellum manuscript shown here is ‘The Fall of Princes’, a Middle English version by the poet John Lydgate of Laurent de Premierfait’s French translation of Boccaccio’s De Casibus virorum illustrium.
Sold by Christie’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on July 11 for £320,000, the work is both one of the greatest and longest texts of the Middle Ages, running to more than 36,000 lines in all.
Lydgate began work on this English version c.1431, at the request of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, and only completed the task some seven or eight years later. At one stage, a possibly wearied Lydgate even penned a ‘Letter to Gloucester’, a poem that formed a witty request for more funds.