Descriptions in draft of approximately 1,200 medieval manuscripts selected from the collection at Cambridge University Library by M.R. James, undertaken at Eton College from around June 1926 to October 1930, and produced with the intention of publishing a new descriptive catalogue to supersede that published between 1856 and 1867.

James had advocated as early as 1904 the need to revise and update the nineteenth-century catalogue, drafting an appeal to the University that more funding be allocated to the Library for this purpose. In 1916, he was involved in further discussions about the form such a revised catalogue could take, proposing after his appointment as Provost of Eton in 1918 that the manuscripts could be transported to him in stages. This was the arrangement ultimately undertaken after plans were put in place by Alwyn Faber Scholfield, who had been appointed University Librarian in 1923. Pre-printed sheets were prepared by the Library, onto which basic details were written by a member of library staff, Basil Atkinson. These, and earlier draft descriptions by Charles Sayle (see: UA ULIB/7/3/72), were then transported with the manuscripts to James at Eton.

Since James had declined to describe the legal manuscripts, among others, the catalogue was left incomplete at his death in 1936. An attempt c. 1939-45 by the University Typewriting Office to bring his drafts into a form suitable for publication was abandoned (those transcriptions that were completed have been retained here, at the end of James’s descriptions). In 1948, Harold Pink was given the task of updating, revising and preparing James’s notes for publication, following a template proposed by Roger Mynors. Pink – whose hand is one of several but by far the most prolific of the annotators of the descriptions – laboured at this task until his retirement in 1970 and for a year thereafter (see: UA ULIB/7/3/75). During this period, the notes continued to be used by University Library staff, and were annotated by, among others, Roger Mynors, John Oates and Arthur Owen. Some hands have yet to be identified.