Cotton Augustus A.iv is the base text chosen for this edition of selections from Troy Book, as it was for Henry Bergen's complete edition of the poem prepared for the Early English Text Society early in this century. Cotton Augustus offers the most complete early text. Written on vellum leaves measuring 26 x 15 inches, the manuscript is composed of 155 folios, gathered in eight-leaf quires. The script is an Anglicana formata, with the characteristic double-lobed a, e, and g. The letter d is looped. Both s and long s are used. The two-shaped r replaces the regular r after the letter o, but the forked r does not appear. Cotton Augustus contains only Troy Book. The text is arranged in double columns of 49 lines, except for the rhyme royal stanzas of the Envoy and the two eight-line stanzas of the final Envoy and Verba translatoris. The first miniature (fol. 1ra) contains the arms of Sir Thomas Chaworth (d. 1458) and his second wife, Isabella de Ailesbury below the portrait of Lydgate and Henry V. A short description of the manuscript appears in the British Museum catalogue compiled by H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert. A more extensive description is contained in Bergen's edition (4:1-4).

Here and elsewhere, Lydgate uses the same images for poets that he applies in the narrative to characters who employ deceitful language to mislead others and subvert just deliberation. In the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Troy Book enjoyed considerable reputation and influence. Not long after it was composed, it served as the source for a prose Sege of Troy, which retold the story through the fall of the city at the end of Lydgate's Book 4. In The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (STC 15375), the first book printed in English (c. 1475), William Caxton professes that there is no need for him to translate the portion of his French source, Raoul Lefévre's Recueil des Histoires de Troie, dealing with the fall of Troy: "And as for the thirde book whiche treteth of the generall and last destruccioun of Troye Hit nedeth not to translate hit into englissh ffor as moche as that worshifull and religyous man dan John lidgate monke of Burye did translate hit but late // after whos werke I fere to take upon me that am not worthy to bere his penner and ynke horne after hym, to medle me in that werke" (Epilogue to Book 2). Troy Book's classical topic, narrative scope, and moral purpose probably had something to do with William Dunbar's inclusion of Lydgate with Chaucer and John Gower as a triad of originary English poets in his early-sixteenth-century "Lament for the Makaris": "The noble Chaucer, of makaris flour, / The Monk of Bery, and Gower, all thre" (lines 50-51). Richard Pynson printed the first edition of Troy Book in 1513, under the title The hystorye / sege and dystruccyon of Troye (STC 5579). As A. S. G. Edwards and Carol M. Meale note, Pynson's edition was printed at the command of Henry VIII to manipulate public opinion in his first French compaign (p. 99). Thomas Marshe printed a second edition in 1555, with a prefatory epistle by Robert Braham (STC 5580). The continuing influence of Troy Book can be detected in Thomas Heywood's modernization, printed in 1614 as The Life and Death of Hector (STC 13346a), and in the works of Robert Henryson, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. The sense of Trojan history and particularly of Cressida's character in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida bear the imprint of Lydgate's poem. Reimer, Stephen R. "The Lydgate Canon: A Project Description." Literary and Linguistic Computing 5 (1990), 248-49. Runa – Wisdom of the Runes’ presents what is, without doubt, the most misunderstood, probably the most cynically abused set of runes in the history of runology. The Armanen runes have been ignored by scholars, abused by right wing extremists, and largely forgotten by students of the occult. Nevertheless, the Armanen runes are in many ways the quintessential esoteric rune row. Originally conceived of by the nineteenth-century German mystic Guido von List, the Armanen runes offer us the most esoterically charged futharks ever encountered.Mieszkowski, Gretchen. "The Reputation of Criseyde, 1155-1500." Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 43 (1971), 71-153. Deep in the New England forests a stone circle lays hidden, nestled in a clearing high atop a mountain of granite. Formed in the pattern of the many old stone walls which dot the region it is here that the Willow Path emerges from the land itself. In nature there exists an underlying current; a continuity of wisdom and consciousness that manifests in the Magical Arts.

Eleanor Antin (b. 1935), 'Judgement of Paris', after Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). Chromogenic print, edition 4/5, from 'Helen's Odyssey', 2007. Alexander, Jonathan. "William Abell 'lymnour' and 15th Century English Illumination." In Kunsthistorische Forschungen Otto Pächt zu seinem 70. Geburtstag. Ed. Artur Rosenauer and Gerold Weber. Salzburg: Residenz Verlag, 1972. Pp. 166-72. Walsh, Elizabeth R. S. C. J. "John Lydgate and the Proverbial Tiger." In The Learned and the Lewed: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Harvard English Studies 5. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974. Pp. 291-303.

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Various manuscripts preserve marginal responses to Lydgate's sententious passages in Troy Book. In Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.876, Agamemnon's speech to Menelaus, counseling him to disguise his grief at Helen's loss (2.4337-4429), carries the marginal reminder, "note thes | and follow." In Rawlinson C.446, a sixteenth-century reader has added verses on the dishonorable deaths of Hector and Troilus at the hands of Achilles. In the Pierpont Morgan manuscript and in slightly later manuscripts (dating from the mid-fifteenth century onwards), pointing hands mark various passages in the text, especially those dealing with the supposed perfidy of women. John Lydgate's Troy Book: A Middle English Iliad (The Troy Myth in Medieval Britain Book 1) by D M Smith (2019 Kindle) - complete

A pendant in Bronze limited to 80 depicting the ‘Toad and Host’, a sign invoking the solitary initiatory tradition of the toad-wtich. A tradition found in the lore of numerous parts of Britain gives the initiation being conferred by the witch circling a church before feeding part of the consecrated Host to a toad – Often the ‘Devi’ in disguise. It is thus a symbol of the Divine spark within all things and the old tenet of ‘ All is One‘. Studer, John. "History as Moral Instruction: John Lydgate's Record of Troie Toun." Emporia State Research Studies 19.1 (1970), 5-13, 22.The Horned Hand – an ancient symbol of power and protection, a traditional Apotropaic Charm against The link with Henry also has some enticing biographical dimensions. Lydgate spent time at Oxford in Gloucester College, which the Benedictines maintained for monks engaged in university study. Henry had studied at Queen's College in 1394, and sometime between 1406 and 1408 wrote Lydgate's abbot asking for permission for Lydgate to continue his studies, either in divinity or canon law. Henry's letter mentions that he has heard good reports about Lydgate; it does not indicate necessarily that the Prince of Wales and the monk had a personal acquaintance. John Norton-Smith proposes, however, that Lydgate resided in Oxford from approximately 1397 to 1408 and that he met Henry (p. 195n). The rubrics of Lydgate manuscripts owned by the fifteenth-century antiquarian John Shirley suggest that Lydgate and Henry shared interests in the liturgy, but these are textual sources that postdate Troy Book. Henry's religious fervor matched his enthusiasm for tales of chivalry. Schirmer argues that Lydgate's attitude differs from his patron's endorsement of military adventure. He contends, for example, that Lydgate initially invokes Mars (Pro. 1-37) but reproves him (4.4440-4536) after Henry becomes king. In his view, the line "[a]lmost for nought was this strif begonne" (2.7855) refers not just to the Trojan War but also to the pointlessness of the French war. Lydgate's peace sentiments seem, however, more the expression of commonplace counsel than a rejection of Henry's policies. To be sure, there are profound tensions and contradictions in Troy Book, but they grow out of the narrative that Lydgate recounts and embellishes and not from a kind of authorial resistance. In its immediate historical context, the poem aims to affirm chivalric virtues, offer examples and moral precepts, and celebrate the national myth of Trojan origins. The Laud Troy Book. Ed. J. E. Wülfing. Early English Text Society, o.s. 121 and 122. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1902-03. The reference edition of Troy Book is that by Henry Bergen, published as volumes 97, 103, 106 and 126 of the Early English Text Society Extra Series between 1906 and 1935. [16] An excellent, abridged online edition of the "Troy Book" with substantial glosses to aid modern readers is available from the Middle English Texts Series, edited by Robert R. Edwards.

McIntosh, Angus. "Some Notes on the Language and Textual Transmission of the Scottish Troy Book." Archivum Linguisticum 10 (1979), 1-19. Gray, Douglas (1970). "Later Poetry: The Courtly Tradition". In Bolton, W. F. (ed.). The Middle Ages. Sphere History of Literature in the English Language, Volume 1. London: Sphere. ISBN 9780872261259 . Retrieved 5 August 2012. Jones, Terry; etal. (2004) [2003]. Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413759202. Gibbs, Antony (1971). "Lydgate, John (?1370-1452)". In Daiches, David (ed.). The Penguin Companion to Literature, Volume 1. Harmondsworth: Penguin. p.325. ISBN 9780070492752 . Retrieved 6 August 2012. This edition was going to be the Special Limited Edition but was produced with the wrong cover material. We are now selling this edition as a second at a reduced price, the book will be stamped inside as a ‘Troy Books second’.

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A romp through the lives of ancient Greek gods. Fry is at his story-telling best . . . the gods will be pleased' Times Critic and Poet: What Lydgate and Henryson Did to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde." Modern Language Quarterly 53 (1992), 23-40. He writes, “Finally, Roger Lancelyn Green was one of the writers who woke me to the pleasures of Greek myths when I was young. His coverage of every aspect of the Trojan war is brisk and a little sanitised for children, but well researched and highly readable.” Strohm, Paul. " Storie, Spelle, Geste, Romaunce, Tragedie: Generic Distinctions in the Middle English Troy Narratives." Speculum 46 (1971), 348-59.