Worksop bestiary

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Accession number: 
MS M.81
Title: 
Worksop bestiary
Created: 
England, possibly in Lincoln or York, ca. 1185.
Binding: 
19th-century English green morocco over heavy boards, blind-tooled and gold-tooled, lettered: De creatione mundi. De natura bestiarum volucrum. Herbarum. Hominum. De tera et orbis partibus.
Credit: 
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1902.
Description: 
120 leaves (1 column, 23-25 lines), bound : vellum, ill. ; 215 x 155 mm
Provenance: 
Given in 1187 by Philip, Canon of Lincoln to the Augustinian Priory of Radford, now called Worksop; Duke of Hamilton Collection (Hamilton Palace Library, Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland); sold privately in 1883 with the Hamilton Collection to the Royal Museum of Berlin (The Hamilton Palace libraries: catalogue of the Hamilton Collection of manuscripts, 1882, no. 77); resold with a portion of the Hamilton Collection returned from Berlin (London, Sotheby's, May 23, 1889, lot 2) to Trübner; Jacques Rosenthal of Munich; purchased by William Morris through Sydney Cockerell from Rosenthal, Apr. 30, 1896; Richard Bennett (purchased from Morris's estate, 1897); Catalogue of manuscripts and early printed books from the libraries of William Morris, Richard Bennett, Bertram, fourth Earl of Ashburnham, and other sources, no. 107; purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) with the Bennett Collection in 1902; J.P. Morgan (1867-1943).
Notes: 

Ms. bestiary; written and illuminated in England, possibly in Lincoln or York, ca. 1185.
Texts: De imagine mundi (fol. 2-7); bestiary; Pseudo-Augustine, Sermo de beato Joseph (fol. 118-120v).
Decoration: 106 miniatures of various sizes.

Script: 
Continental protogothic book script
Language: 
Latin
Century: 
Classification: