Review: Short Scottish Prose Chronicles. Edited by Dan Embree, Edward Donald Kennedy and Kathleen Daly

This volume is a valuable contribution both to our understanding of the development of Scottish historical writing and our understanding of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It includes transcriptions and translations, alongside a lengthy introduction and commentaries on the texts, of seven short prose chronicles written in or about Scotland in this period. The St Andrews Chronicle is published for the first time here, and La Vraie Cronicque d'Escoce and Nomina Omnium Regum Scotorum are published in full and translated for the first time. In addition, this is the first time that editions of The Scottis Originale and the Brevis Cronica that take into account all surviving manuscript copies have been published. The Chronicle of the Scots and The Ynglis Chronicle are also included. The inclusion of two other short chronicles which have been omitted, The Auchinleck Chronicle and The Sex Werkdays and Agis from the Asloan manuscript, would have made this a more complete resource for students and researchers. However, their absence is justified because recent editions of these chronicles have been produced elsewhere.