Prof Peter Lucas

Honorary Research Associate

Emeritus Professor of Old and Middle English (UCDublin)
Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries
Senior Member of Wolfson College

Contact Information

Wolfson College, Cambridge, CB3 9BB.
Email: pjl24@cam.ac.uk

Academic Interests

Old English Poetry
Medieval Manuscripts
Medieval English Literature
The Early Printing of Anglo-Saxon (OE)

Selected Publications

  • Exodus, Exeter Medieval English Texts and Studies, 3rd edn, Liverpool University Press (1st edn Methuen, 1977, 2nd edn 1994), 2020.
  • Rome 1450. Capgrave's Jubilee Guide: The Solace of Pilgrimes, Textes Vernaculaires du Moyen Âge 28, Turnhout, Brepols, 2021.
  • John Capgrave's Abbreuiacion of Cronicles, Early English Text Society, Original Series 285, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983.  
  • From Author to Audience: John Capgrave and Medieval Publication, Dublin, University College Dublin Press, 1997.
  • Franciscus Junius's Cædmonis Monachi Paraphrasis Poetica Genesios ..., Early Studies in Germanic Philology 3, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2000, re-issued as e-book Leiden, Brill, 2021 (https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004455948)
  • Latin Manuscripts with Anglo-Saxon Glosses (with A.N. Doane and I.C. Cunningham), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile 5, Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies 175, Tempe, Arizona, 1997.
  • Corpus Christi College, Cambridge I: MSS 41, 57, 191, 302, 303, 367, 383, 422 (with T. Graham, R.J.S. Grant and E. Treharne), ASMMF 11, MRTS 265, Tempe, Arizona, 2003.
  • Manuscripts Relating to Dunstan, Ælfric, and Wulfstan; the “Eadwine Pslater” Group (with J. Wilcox), ASMMF 16, MRTS 343, Tempe, Arizona, 2008.
  • Manuscripts in France (with Angela M. Lucas), ASMMF 18, MRTS 381, Tempe, Arizona, 2012.
  • The Medieval Manuscripts at Maynooth: Explorations in the Unknown (with Angela M. Lucas), Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2014, pp. xxviii + 276.
  • Corpus Christi College, Cambridge II: MSS 12, 144, 162, 178, 188, 198, 265, 285, 322, 326, 449, ASMMF 25, MRTS 497, Tempe, Arizona, 2016.
  • Manuscripts in Italy, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile 27, Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies 533, Tempe, Arizona, 2018.
  • The Scansion of Beowulf, by Alan Bliss, edited with a Foreword by Peter J. Lucas, Old English Newsletter Subsidia 22, Kalamazoo MI, Medieval Institute, 1995.
  • Middle English from Tongue to Text. Selected Papers from the Third International Conference on Middle English: Language and Text, held at Dublin, Ireland, 1-4 July 1999 (with Angela M. Lucas). Studies in English Medieval Language and Literature 4, Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 2002.

(Articles, from 1995)

  • 'The Metrical  Epilogue to the Alfredian Pastoral Care: A Postscript from Junius', Anglo-Saxon England, xxiv (1995), 43-50.
  • 'A Testimonye of Verye Ancient Tyme? Some Manuscript Models for the Parkerian Anglo-Saxon Type-Designs', in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers: Essays presented to M.B. Parkes, ed. P.R. Robinson and R. Zim (Aldershot, 1997), pp.147-88.  
  • 'From Jabberwocky back to Old English: Nonsense, Anglo-Saxon and Oxford', in Language History and Linguistic Modelling: A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th Birthday, ed. Raymond Hickey and Stanis¬aw Puppel, Berlin, 1997, pp.503-20. 
  • 'Franciscus Junius and the Versification of Judith', in The Preservation and Transmission of Anglo-Saxon Culture, ed. P.E. Szarmach and J.T. Rosenthal, Studies in Medieval Culture 40 (Kalamazoo, MI, 1997), pp.369-404.  
  • 'The Treatment of Language', in A Guide to Editing Middle English , ed. Vincent McCarren and Douglas Moffat, Ann Arbor, Michigan University Press, 1998, pp.169-83.
  • 'Junius, his Printers and his Types: An Interim Report', in Franciscus Junius and his Circle, ed. R.H. Bremmer Jr, DQR Studies in Literature 21 (Amsterdam, 1998), pp.177-97.  
  • ‘The Language of the Loner: From Splendid Isolation to ‘Individual’ in Early English Poetry?’, in Text and Gloss: Studies in Insular Language and Literature (Festschrift for J.D. Pheiffer), ed. Helen Conrad-O’Briain, Anne Marie D’Arcy and John Scattergood (Dublin 1999), pp. 102-18.
  • ‘Parker, Lambarde, and the Provision of Special Sorts for Printing Anglo-Saxon in the Sixteenth Century’, Journal of the Printing Historical Society, 28 (1999), 41-69.
  • ‘Sixteenth-Century English Spelling Reformers and the Printers in Continental Perspective: Sir Thomas Smith and John Hart’, The Library, VII.1 (2000), 3-21.
  • ‘Scribal Imitation of Earlier Handwriting: “Bastard Saxon” and its Impact’, in Le Statut du Scripteur au Moyen Age: Actes du XIIe Colloque Scientifique du Comité International de Paléographie Latine (Cluny, 17-20 Juillet 1998), edd. Marie-Clotilde Hubert, Emmanuel Poulle, Marc H. Smith, Matériaux pour l’Histoire publiés par l’École des Chartes 2 (Paris, 2000), pp. 151-60.
  • ‘Printing Anglo-Saxon in Holland and John Selden’s Mare Clausum seu de Dominio Maris’, Quaerendo, 31 (2001), 120-36.
  • ‘Cotton MS Domitian A.viii, the F-version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and William Camden’, Notes and Queries, 246 (2001), 98-9.
  • (With Angela M. Lucas) ‘A Description of Jesus College MS Q.G.23 containing Guy De Chauliac’s Chirurgie: A Supplement to M.R. James’s Catalogue’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 12:2 (2001), 132-44.
  • ‘John Minsheu, Polymath and Poseur: Old English in an Early Seventeenth-Century Dictionary’, in Of Dyuersitie & Chaunge of Langage: Essays presented to Manfred Görlach on the occasion of his 65th birthday, edd. Katja Lenz and Ruth Möhlig, Heidelberg: Winter 2002, pp.144-56.
  • ‘From Politics to Practicalities: Printing Anglo-Saxon in the Context of Seventeenth Century scholarship’, The Library, VII.4 (2003), 28-48.                 
  • ‘William Retchford, Pupil of Abraham Wheelock in Anglo-Saxon: “He understands the Saxon as well as myself”’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society XII.4 (2003), 335-61, and XIII.1 (2004), 111.
  • (With Angela M. Lucas) ‘Lost and Found: Some Manuscripts from Liège now in Maynooth’, Scriptorium, 58 (2004), 83-99.
  • 'Capgrave, John (1393-1464), in Dictionary of National Biography, edd. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 60 vols, (Oxford, University Press, 2004), at vol.9, pp.991-3.
  • ‘Earlier Verse Romance’, ch.16 in Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature, edd. David F. Johnson and Elaine Treharne (Oxford, University Press, 2005), pp.229-40.
  • ‘An Englishman in Rome: Capgrave’s 1450-Jubilee Guide, The Solace of Pilgrims’, in Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour of John Scattergood, edd. Anne Marie D’Arcy and Alan J. Fletcher (Dublin, Four Courts, 2005), pp.201-17.
  • ‘Borrowing and Reference: Access to Libraries in the Late Middle Ages’, chapter 9 for The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, vol. I, To 1640, edd. Elisabeth Leedham-Green and Teresa Webber (Cambridge: University Press 2006), pp.242-62.
  • ‘Abraham Whelock and the Presentation of Anglo-Saxon: From Manuscript To Print’, in Beatus Vir: Studies in Early English and Norse Manuscripts in Memory of Phillip Pulsiano, edd. A.N. Doane and Kirsten Wolf. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies 319 (Tempe, Arizona, 2006), pp.383-439.
  • ‘A Description of University College Dublin MS 9’, Manuscripta, 52 (2008), 325-33.
  • ‘Un Nouveau Manuscrit Daté: Le Bénédictionnaire d’Armand de Narcès, Archevêque d’Aix-en-Provence (1329-48), retrouvé à Maynooth en Irelande’, Scriptorium, 64 (2010), 120-26.
  • ‘The Verceli Book Revisited’, in The Genesis of Books: Studies in the Scribal Culture of Medieval England in Honour of A.N. Doane, edd. Matthew T. Hussey and John D. Niles. Studies in the Early Middle Ages 9 (Turnhout, Brepols, 2011), pp.161-74.
  • ‘Oxford Merton College MS 87 and William Gybbe the Scribe’, Notes and Queries, 258 (2013), 202.
  • ‘The Earliest Modern Anglo-Saxon Grammar: Sir Henry Spelman, Abraham Wheelock and William Retchford’, Anglo-Saxon England, 45 (2016), 379–417.   
  • 'Middle English Vintage "Fleet"', Notes and Queries, 263 (2018), 482–3.
  • 'William Camden, Seventeenth-Century Atlases of the British Isles and the Printing of Anglo-Saxon', The Antiquaries Journal, 98 (2018), 219–44. 
  • (With Angela M. Lucas) 'A Psalter from Maillezais at Maynooth', Manuscript Studies, 3 (2018), 431–8.
  • ‘A Conspectus of Letters to and from Sir Henry Spelman (1563/4–1641)’, Antiquaries Journal, 102 (2022), 370–88 + on-line supplement: doi:1017/S0003581522000026
  • ‘On the Metre of Exodus’, in Tradition and Innovation in Old English Metre, ed. R. A. Burns & R. F. Pascual (York: Arc Humanities Press, 2022), pp. 43–77.
  • ‘Alan Bliss: 1921–1985’, in Tradition and Innovation in Old English Metre, ed. R. A. Burns & R. J. Pascual (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2022), pp. 249–50.
  • ‘Elizabeth Elstob and the Printing of Anglo-Saxon’, Anglia, 141 (2023), 197–233.