More than 50 rare medieval manuscripts and early print editions, spanning 1,000 years of history, are now available for free on the British Library’s Discovering Literature website.
Highlights of the new additions to the website include the earliest autobiography in English, The Book of Margery Kempe, the first work authored by a woman in English, Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, the earliest work of theatre criticism in English, Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, and the single surviving manuscript of Beowulf, the longest epic poem in Old English.
One of the greatest collections of Scottish medieval verse, the Bannatyne Manuscript from the National Library of Scotland, can also now be viewed online.