In creating this edition and translation, I acknowledge the debt I owe to earlier scholars of Oxford, Jesus College, MS 29 (II), in particular, Richard Morris, Betty Hill, and Carleton Brown. Among the living, I am grateful to a dedicated cadre of scholars who have devoted attention to early Middle English studies and provided able guidance to my wanderings, most especially Julia Boffey, Adrienne Williams Boyarin, Elizabeth Bryan, Neil Cartlidge, Marilyn Corrie, Rory Critten, Tony Edwards, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Thomas Hahn, Marjorie Harrington, John Hines, Jennifer Jahner, Dorothy Kim, Jenni Nuttall, James Sargen, Wendy Scase, Stephen Yeager, and — in matters Anglo-French — Maureen Boulton, Ardis Butterfield, Tony Hunt, Delbert Russell, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne. A special thank you goes to David Raybin on matters Middle English, Anglo-French, and more. Correspondence on specific topics with Jacob Ridley, Corinne Saunders, John Scattergood, and Nicholas Watson has proved invaluable to my thinking. I must also mention the ever-felt influence of mentors now gone: Morton Bloomfield for his perceptions about Love Rune, Eric Stanley for his edition of Owl, and Derek Pearsall for his insistence that manuscripts be seen whole.

To Martin Kaufmann and the librarians at the Bodleian Library, and to Owen McKnight, Librarian of Jesus College, I am grateful for the opportunity to examine Oxford, Jesus College, MS 29 in March 2019 and permission to scan images. I also acknowledge the generous support of Kent State University for research time in 2018–2019 that allowed me to complete most of the research for this book. Helmed by Pamela Yee, the editorial team for the Middle English Texts Series (METS), Robbins Library, University of Rochester, has labored above and beyond to establish new style and production standards during the making of this volume. In particular, I thank Ashley Conklin for reviewing manuscript transcriptions, and Steffi Delcourt for finalizing details and formatting everything in accordance with new software. For improvements to content, I acknowledge the anonymous reviewer and the readers from the METS Editorial Board, that is, Russell Peck, Alan Lupack, and Pamela Yee. Funding for METS — internally from the University of Rochester and TEAMS and (most substantially) externally from the National Endowment for the Humanities — is also deeply appreciated because it allows this series of accessible editions of texts from medieval England to carry on and flourish.