History
The Middle English Texts series (MET) was launched in 1975. Its founding general editors, Manfred Görlach and Oliver Pickering, were succeeded in 2000 by a team of three general editors: Margaret Connolly, William Marx, and Hans Sauer; their leadership of the series is supported by an advisory board of senior academics. From the outset Middle English Texts has been published by Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg. The series has had a continuous history of publication, and most of its volumes continue to be available in print. At its 45th anniversary in 2020 the series comprised a total of 59 volumes; typically one or two volumes are published each year, with a considerable number of editions at various stages of preparation.
Aims and Coverage
The original aims of the Middle English Texts series continue to govern its programme of publication. The series publishes shorter works in Middle English that have not previously been edited, or where existing editions can be improved upon, and parts of longer texts where a complete edition is not likely to appear in the foreseeable future. Middle English Texts publishes a broad range of texts, both poetry and prose, and includes religious texts, pastoralia, historical writing, legal texts, scientific and medical texts. In the case of texts that are translations into Middle English, if the Latin or French source is unpublished or not easily available, editors are encouraged to include a transcription or edition of the source text.
Reviews
‘A highly successful series in giving students of Middle English much to which they had no access before…'
‘One of the most regular and consistently reliable publications in its field.’
General Editors
Margaret Connolly
Margaret Connolly is Professor of Palaeography and Codicology at the University of St Andrews and Director of the St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies. After completing her MA and PhD degrees at the University of St Andrews, Margaret Connolly took up a lectureship in Medieval and Renaissance English at University College Cork. She was Assistant Dean of Arts there between 1996–1999, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2004. Margaret was also Government of Ireland Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge in 2002–03 and is a life member of that college.
Margaret was a General Editor of The Mediaeval Journal published by Brepols from its inception until 2022. She is chair of the advisory board for the Index of Middle English Prose, and on the editorial board of the Journal of the Early Book Society
Learn more about Margaret Connolly on her website here.
Contact Margaret at [email protected]
William Marx
William’s research interests and publications are mainly in the field of Medieval Studies, principally manuscript studies; the editing of Middle English and Latin Texts; the transmission of theological and devotional ideas and themes through vernacular literature and iconography; perceptions of the Devil in the Middle Ages; and the literature of history. His publications include editions of medieval English, Anglo-Norman, and Latin texts, such as The Devils’ Parliament, the Conflictus inter Deum et Diabolum, and the Quis dabit. He is the author of The Devil’s Rights and the Redemption in the Literature of Medieval England, and has published a major study of the medieval English Gospel of Nicodemus. He has also published a catalogue and study of the manuscripts containing Middle English prose held by the National Library of Wales in the Index of Middle English Prose series.
He has edited and contributed to a number of collections of essays, on Lampeter’s antiquarian library, The Founders’ Library: Bibliographical and Contextual Studies, and medieval book production, Sources, Exemplars, and Copy-Texts. With Janet Burton of the History Department he has edited a collection of essays entitled Readers, Printers, Churchmen, and Travellers in honour of the theologian and bibliographer David Selwyn. His current research projects focus on Middle English chronicle writing, and Middle English devotional literature.
William Marx serves on the Council of the Early English Text Society. He is also one of the general editors for Lampeter’s arts and humanities journal Trivium.
Learn more about William Marx on his website here.
Contact William Marx at [email protected]
Hans Sauer †
Hans Sauer (1946-2022) was emeritus professor of English at the University of Munich (LMU), Germany. He also taught at the Vistula University in Warsaw, Poland and at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. Other previous posts and assignments (as professor or as visiting professor), some of them for a long time or repeatedly, included (in Germany) Eichstätt, Würzburg, Dresden, (in Europe) Innsbruck, Palermo, Lodz, Poznan, Katowice, (world-wide) Columbus / Ohio, Tokyo, Beijing (Peking), Chongqing, Kuala Lumpur.
Hans’s research interests and publications included editions and studies of Medieval English texts; word-formation; glosses, glossaries and lexicography; plant names; Beowulf , especially Beowulf translations and Beowulf films; the history of linguistics and of English studies; varieties of English (advertising language; pidgins and creoles); interjections; and binomials. He was a co-editor of MUSE (formerly TUEPh = Texte und Untersuchungen zur Englischen Philologie), of Anglia and LexMA (Lexikon des Mittelalters), and of ‘English and Beyond’. An obituary is available here.