The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: A Collective Edition. Vol. 2. The Vercelli Book

In accordance with the plan of this collective edition of Anglo-Saxon poetry, as announced in the Preface to the first volume, containing the texts of the Junius Manuscript, the poetical parts of the Vercelli Book are here grouped together in a second volume. Although the original compilers of the Vercelli Book, as of the other extant Anglo-Saxon miscellanies, apparently had no very strict principles of similarity in mind in determining what should be included in their collection, nevertheless the Vercelli Book, like the Junius Manuscript, exhibits a certain degree of uniformity. For the poems of the Junius Manuscript are examples of versified Biblical narrative, whereas the poems of the Vercelli Book are legendary and homiletic in character. The two longest poems of the Vercelli Book are "Andreas" and "Elene", saints’ lives of less authenticity than the Scripture itself, and like the prose homilies and the other poetical pieces in the Vercelli Book, probably designed for occasional use to supplement and lighten the formal offices of the service. The grouping of these poems in a volume of their own, therefore, reflects something more than a mere accident of preservation within the limits of a single manuscript.