Editing Exeter Book (section)

==History==
The Exeter Book is generally acknowledged to be one of the great works of the [[English Benedictine Reform|English Benedictine revival]] of the tenth century; the precise dates that it was written and compiled are unknown, although proposed dates range from 960 to 990.{{refn|<ref name="Johnson2016"/><ref name="UoPP2017"/><ref name="Cathedral"/><ref name="Conner2015"/><ref name="EB"/><ref name="BL"/><ref name="Conner2019"/><ref name="Treharne2017"/>}} This period saw a rise in monastic activity and productivity under the renewed influence of Benedictine principles and standards.  At the opening of the period, [[Dunstan]]'s importance to the Church and to the English kingdom was established, culminating in his appointment to the [[Archbishop of Canterbury|Archbishopric at Canterbury]] under [[Edgar of England]] and leading to the monastic reformation by which this era was characterised. Dunstan died in 988, and by the period's close, England under [[Ethelred the Unready|Æthelred]] faced an increasingly determined Scandinavian incursion, to which it would eventually succumb.

The Exeter Book's heritage becomes traceable from the death of Leofric, bishop of Exeter, in 1072.<ref>{{cite book |last=Förster |first=Max |chapter=The Donations of Leofric to Exeter |title=The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry |editor=Chambers, Forster and Flower|year=1933}}</ref> Among the possessions which he bequeathed in his will to the then-impoverished monastery at Exeter (the precursor to the later cathedral) is one famously described as ''i mycel Englisc boc be gehwilcum þingum on leoð-wisan geworht'': "one large English book on various subjects, composed in verse form".<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Alexander |first=Michael |title=The First Poems in English |publisher=Penguin Books |year=2008 |isbn=9780140433784 |location=London |page=xvii |language=en |chapter=Introduction}}</ref> This book has been widely identified by scholars as the Exeter Codex.<ref name=":0" />{{refn|<ref name="Johnson2016"/><ref name="UoPP2017"/><ref name="Gameson1996"/><ref name="BL"/><ref name="Conner2019"/>}}

However Leofric's bequest was made at least three generations after the book was written, and it has generally been assumed that it had originated elsewhere.<ref name="Gameson1996"/> According to Patrick Conner, the original scribe who wrote the text probably did not write it as a single volume, but rather three separate manuscript booklets which were later compiled into the Exeter Book codex.<ref name="Conner2015">{{cite book |last=Conner |first=Patrick W. |editor-last1=Richards |editor-first1=Mary P. |title=Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings |date=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-75890-7 |pages=301–302 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R3RACwAAQBAJ&pg=PA301 |chapter=The Structure of the Exeter Book Codex}}</ref> There are a number of missing [[Section_(bookbinding)|gatherings]] and pages.<ref name="UoPP2017"/> Some marginalia were added to the manuscript by the antiquarians [[Laurence Nowell]] in the sixteenth century and [[George Hickes (divine)|George Hickes]] in the seventeenth.<ref>{{cite book | editor-first= Bernard J. | editor-last= Muir | editor-link= Bernard J. Muir | year= 2000 | title= The Exeter anthology of Old English poetry: an edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501 | edition=2nd | publisher= University of Exeter Press | location= Exeter | isbn= 0-85989-630-7 |pages=15–16}}</ref>