Adam Pinkhurst The Scribe/Author:

 

Who Wrote the Ellesmere Chaucer?

            Chaucer did not finish writing the Canterbury Tales, because he died in 1400. There does not seem to be any existing documents written by his own hand, including his draft of the tales. So, the Canterbury Tales is an unfinished work, but a scribe chose to copy Chaucer’s drafts of Canterbury tales into a very elaborately decorated manuscript. The scribe who had access to Chaucer’s tales, must have been very close to him. The illuminators, as well.

Chaucer’s Scribe is Adam Pinkhurst

In 2004, a literary scholar and scribe professor named Linne R. Mooney was compiling a database of more than two hundred scribes working in England between 1375 and 1425, whose handwriting is found in more than one manuscript (2006, Mooney). Mooney is an expert on calligraphy of the Middle Ages, therefore, in comparing the hand of Scribe B on the manuscripts with the signatures from early records, in the year 1392, of the Scriveners' Company, in the city of London, she was able to locate a match that revealed the name: Adam Pinkhurst. This is the year that Chaucer lived and authored his work. Mooney identified Pinkhurst as the copyist of the Ellesmere and Hengwrt manuscript (Fisher, 1). This is important, because Pinkhurst’s work, as a scribe, still exists today. Since copyists/scribe was an occupation in the 1300s, was Pinkhurst paid for copying Chaucer’s tales? If so, by whom? Why was the manuscript so elaborately designed? Who read the manuscript? Since we know who the scribe of the Ellesmere and the Hengwrt are, we can begin to explore how Pinkhurst became a scribe. In researching Pinkhurst, we might be able to identify his relationship to Chaucer.