[PW] Bunyan and de Geideville -- and Ms Curt.

[Dennis Lien]

At 03:17 AM 3/9/2007, you wrote:
>This is curiosity.
>
>Source: 306 of 'Scientific American', November 5, 1859:
>
>LITERARY LARCENY.—An extraordinary statement is in circulation in London
>respecting the 'Pilgrim's Progress', namely, that this celebrated work
>was not written by John Bunyan, but that the entire story is made up
>from an ancient manuscript. Miss Catherine Isabella Curt has published a
>translation, from a French manuscript (in the British Museum), of the
>"Pylegremage of the Sowle,' by G. de Geideville, a churchman who
>flourished in the fifteenth century. A translation of the original work
>was printed by Caxton in 1483, and Bunyan's 'Pilgrims Progress' is said
>to be nearly a verbatim copy of that extremely rare book.
>
>(NOTE: The source is Cornell's 'Making of America'.  I used their OCR
>and corrected it from an image file.  The names are all double-checked.)
>
>I have failed, so far, to trace any Web reference to this claim, or to
>de Geideville or to Ms Curt, and I am wondering (no more than that) what
>happened to the claim -- or even where it was made. <snip>


I don't doubt that you doublechecked the names as SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
had them, but SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN apparently had them wildly wrong:


Title:          The booke of the Pylgremage of the Sowle,
Author(s):      Guillaume, de Deguileville, 14th cent.
Cust, Katherine Isabella, ; ed.
Publication:    London, B.M. Pickering,
Year:   1859
Description:    xix, 91 p. 3 pl. (2 col.) 27 cm.
Language:       English
Standard No:    LCCN: a 20-262
Note(s):        One page block printing with illuminated border./ "This 
translation ... was made from the French with additions, in ... 1413. The 
translator, or at least the author of the `additions, ... was in all 
probability Lydgate; for the 34th chapter of Lydgate's metrical `Life of 
the Virgin Mary' is literally repeated in the 34th chapter of this 
translation of `The Charter of Mercy."/ The editor is indebted to friends 
for facsimiles of the drawings which have been copied from the originals, 
and lithographed by Mr. Vincent Brooks. Those in colour being from the 
illuminated manuscript translation in the British Museum (Egerton 615), and 
those in block printing from the prose French edition of the "Pylgremage of 
the Sowle," printed by Verard, at Paris, in 1499.
Class Descriptors:      LC: PQ1483.G3
Other Titles:   Pylgremage of the Sowle.
Responsibility:         tr. from the French of Guillaume de Guileville, and 
printed by William Caxton An. 1483 with lluminations taken from the ms. 
copy in the British museum, ed. by Katherine Isabella Cust.



Dennis Lien / U of Minnesota Libraries // d-lien at umn.edu