About the project

The Auchinleck Manuscript Project

In Memory of Professor David Burnley, 1941 - 2001

The Editors

This on-line facsimile-edition of the Auchinleck Manuscript was co-edited by Professor David Burnley and Dr Alison Wiggins.

The Technical Team

The site was constructed by Tony Stuart and Ian Hewines of the National Library of Scotland. Digitisation was carried out by ImageLife Digital Archival Solutions.

Project History September 2000 – July 2003

The Auchinleck MS Project was devised and founded by Professor David Burnley, Department of English Language and Linguistics, University of Sheffield, in September 2000. Transcription and editing of all the texts in the manuscript was completed between September 2000 and August 2001 by Professor David Burnley and Dr Alison Wiggins with the assistance of visiting scholar Professor Kisei Sakemi of the University of Hiroshima. This work was undertaken at the University of Sheffield and enabled by a grant from the Department of English Language and Linguistics.

Digital images of the manuscript folios were produced by the National Library of Scotland in 2001.

The introductory essays were produced by Alison Wiggins whilst MHRA Research Associate at the University of Kent, September 2001 - August 2002. She completed the final stages of editorial work on the project between September 2002 and June 2003 whilst Research Officer at the AHRB Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, Queen Mary, University of London.

The project site was launched in July 2003.

Acknowledgements

Thanks must go, first of all, to Dr Kenneth Gibson and Tony Stuart at the National Library of Scotland who were supportive of the project at its inception and whose commitment has ensured that David’s original vision has been brought to fruition. Thanks must also go to Ian Hewines whose dedication in the final stages of the project has been essential to its completion.

I am grateful to the Department of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Sheffield for providing the original funding for the project which enabled the bulk of the transcription and editing of the texts to be completed in the first year.

Thanks go to the archivists and photographic teams at the University of Edinburgh Library, the University of London Library and St Andrews University Library who contributed the photographs of the Edinburgh, London and St Andrews fragments.

I wish to take this opportunity to thank Professor Kisei Sakemi of the University of Hiroshima and Dr Guzmán Mancho of the University of Alcalá who have both been involved in the checking of texts and testing of the site and whose care and attention to detail has been vital to the success of this project.

The advice and encouragement of my academic colleagues has been of great value and I would especially like to thank Dr Jan Broadway, Dr Peter Brown, Professor Lisa Jardine, Professor April McMahon and Dr Míceál Vaughan. Sincere thanks also go to Mrs Helen Burnley for her continued interest, encouragement and enthusiasm.

Alison Wiggins
May 2003