Early English Text Society

Early English Text Society
Abbreviation EETS
Formation 1864
Type Text publication society
Purpose The publication of Old and Middle English literary texts
Location
Region served
United Kingdom
Honorary Director
 Vincent Gillespie
Website http://users.ox.ac.uk/~eets/index.html

The Early English Text Society (EETS) is a text publication society founded in 1864, dedicated to the editing and publication of early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes contain editions of Middle English or Old English texts. It is known for having been the first to print many important English manuscripts, including Cotton Nero A.x, which contains Pearl, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and other poems.

History

A page of the Blickling Homilies in facsimile, as reproduced in The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century: from the Marquis of Lothian's unique MS A.D. 971, edited and translated by Richard Morris, EETS o.s. vols 58, 63, 73 (1874–80)

The Society was founded in England in 1864 by Frederick James Furnivall. Its stated goal in a report of its first year of existence was, "on the one hand, to print all that is most valuable of the yet unprinted MSS. in English, and, on the other, to re-edit and reprint all that is most valuable in printed English books, which from their scarcity or price are not within the reach of the student of moderate means."[1]

As of 2016, the Society had published 347 volumes in its Original Series; 126 volumes in its Extra Series, published between 1867 and 1935, comprising texts previously printed, but only in unsatisfactory or rare editions; and 25 volumes in its Supplementary Series, an occasional and irregular series initiated in 1970. The Society keeps the majority of its older publications in print, excepting only those which have been superseded by subsequent editions in its own series. Volumes are now published on behalf of the Society by Oxford University Press.[2]

Emblem

The Alfred Jewel

The Society emblem is a modified representation of the Anglo-Saxon Alfred Jewel, incorporating a scroll bearing the name of the Society.

Notable members

Notable members of the society when it was formed in 1864 included Furnivall himself, Alfred Tennyson (poet laureate), Warren de la Rue (inventor of the lightbulb), Richard Chenevix Trench (Irish ecclesiastic), Stephen Austin (a Hertford-based printer), Edith Coleridge (granddaughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge), the Rev. Richard Morris (the editor of 12 volumes between 1862 and 1880), and others.

List of directors

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Report of the Committee, January, 1865". Project Gutenberg. 4 Nov 2005. Retrieved 17 May 2013.
  2. ↑ "List of Publications 2015" (PDF). Early English Text Society. Retrieved 30 November 2015.
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