It's been a while since updated anything here because we've been working full pelt on the critical edition for the Early English Text Society. That edition is now finished, and in its final form. A couple of weeks ago, it went to the printers, and while searching for a source or two round and about the place, I saw this actual real evidence that the critical edition is available to order.
Snapshot of amazon.co.uk
There have been some delays, mostly of a technical nature, due to the need to represent Orrm's unique orthography, so the publication date is 2022 (EETS original series 360 & 361), even though it will be printed this year. I had thought the delays would be much longer, but everyone's really pulled it together.
The critical edition released this year will comprise two volumes, containing a brief introduction to the text, the entire text from MS Junius 1, with missing sections supplied by Lambeth MS 783, and a reworked version of the glossary. When we mention the <i>entire</i> text of MS Junius 1, the original medieval manuscript, we can mean different things. Here we mean the apparent intended final condition, after Orrm made all of his changes, erasures and corrections. This leaves a very coherent and consistent text, showing Orrm's "semi-phonetic" script (in the words of Robert Burchfield) in all its grandeur. Lambeth MS 783 is a copy of the original, made in the 1660s by Jan van Vliet. The original manuscript has suffered damage since van Vliet owned it, and we have been able to recover 553 lines along with dozens of fragments for the edition.
Incidentally, it seems that the big digital photos of the manuscript are now available again through the Bodleian at the following link.
https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/90a06f70-880a-4b5b-bd30-798710afff11/
Pip pip.
-Andrew