Nineteenth-Century Collations
For an introduction to these collations, see "The Conybeare-Madden Collation of Thorkelin's Beowulf".
Madden first copied Conybeare's collation into his copy of Thorkelin's Beowulf. He later added his own, more accurate, collation.
Both Conybeare and Madden interleaved their copies of Thorkelin. In the course of collating the edition with the manuscript, they frequently noted important information on the interleaves.
When an interleaf contains a note, the print of the page
identification area on the toolbar is black, not
blue, and includes a triangular arrow. Click the arrow to
open a drop-down menu and gain access to
the interleaf or interleaves.
To view an interleaf correctly facing the page it annotates, first go to Arrange and use Left/Right layout and Free browse mode to display the same page in both frames.
Then click the arrow on the appropriate frame to open the interleaf:
In this case the facing leaf for page 3 belongs in the left frame.
Conybeare discovered the misplacement of text at fol. 131 and noted on the interleaf facing p. 9 that fol. 132 should follow fol. 130; then, on the interleaf facing p. 61, he correctly relocated fol. 147A131 between fols. 146 and 147.
Here, in the bottom window, Madden has copied Conybeare's note identifying the misplaced leaf, fol. 131; the top window displays Madden's interleaf, on which he provides a transcription in Old English script, showing how many letters were lost along the right edge when he collated.
Madden made a skillful tracing, now the frontispiece of his collation (Harvard University, Houghton 28286.24.3*), of the first nine lines of the 'Beowulf' manuscript.
