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Anglo-Norman Text Society

Text publication society for Anglo-Norman literature

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The Anglo-Norman Text Society is a text publication society founded in 1937 by Professor Mildred K. Pope.^[1] The founding aim of the society was to promote the study of Anglo-Norman language and Anglo-Norman literature by facilitating the publication of reliable scholarly editions of a broad range of texts of literary, linguistic, historical and legal value and interest. Based in the United Kingdom, the Society draws individual and institutional members from across the world.

The original series of publications launched by the Society was the Anglo-Norman Texts series, sometimes referred to as the Annual Texts series. The aim of this series was to produce an edition each year (or one volume of a multi-volume edition each year), yet while this rhythm has generally been maintained throughout the Society's history, unforeseen circumstances have on occasion led to minor delays or gaps in this schedule. The series has featured editions by some of the most renowned Anglo-Norman specialists of their time, including Mildred Pope, M. Dominica Legge, Alexander Bell, Ronald C. Johnson, Anthony J. Holden, Brian Merrilees, Ian Short, Tony Hunt, and Delbert Russell.

The Annual Texts series was complemented by the launch of two additional series in 1983. The first of these was the Plain Texts series, which has the goal of providing a critical text predominantly for shorter works, but without the more detailed introduction and notes provided in the Annual Texts series.

The second series was the Occasional Publications series, which, as the name suggests, has been reserved for publications which fall outside the remit of the other series. The first release in this series was a volume of essays compiled in memory of the Society's long-serving President, T. B. W. Reid. The series has also featured Ruth Dean's Anglo-Norman Literature: a Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, an indispensable successor to an earlier work with a similar remit by the Swedish scholar Johan Vising, and most recently Ian Short's Manual of Anglo-Norman, building on Pope's monumental study of Anglo-Norman in the final section of her From Latin to Modern French, with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1934; revised reprints 1952 and 1956). It is also in this series that Holden, Gregory, and Crouch's edition of the History of William Marshal appeared, an account of the life and adventures of the famous William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke.