Adam Pinkhurst

Adam Pinkhurst is a medieval scribe of London, who copied work of the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, including the Hengwrt Chaucer and the Ellesmere Chaucer manuscripts. Identified in 2004 by professor Linne Mooney, he was possibly the person to whom Chaucer addressed his short poem, "Adam, his owne Scriveyn".

Scribe B revealed

Scrutinous research has led academics to conclude that the Hengwrt and the Ellesmere Chaucer manuscripts were copied by the same scribe. This scribe, known as Scribe B, has also been identified at work on the copy of Gower's Confessio Amantis and the Cecil Fragment of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. During the academic year 2003-2004 professor Linne Mooney, a scholar from The University of Maine in the USA, was a Visiting Fellow at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. She was working at the Cambridge Computer Lab on computer-assisted identification of medieval scribal handwriting. Mooney has been compiling a database of more than two hundred scribes working in England between 1375 and 1425, whose handwriting is found in more than one manuscript. Hence she is an authority on the calligrapy of that period. She compared the hand of Scribe B on the manuscripts with the signatures on oaths in the early records of the Scrivener's company in the city of London. Entry eight in the company's member's book of regulations gave a match and revealed the name Adam Pinkhurst. This also indicates that Pinkhurst joined soon after the scriveners began keeping systematic records in the year 1392. That date accords with the period of Chaucer's life and authorship.

Sources and references

• The Riverside Chaucer Third Edition (1987), General Editor Larry D. Benson, Harvard University, Houghton Mufflin Company, Boston. ISBN 0-395-29031-7
• Chaucer scribe revealed, University of Cambridge.
• Simon Horobin, The Language of the Hengwrt Chaucer, Canterbury Tales Project.