A handlist in three volumes of manuscripts in part of the Two-Letter classmark sequence (Dd-Kk).

Charles Sayle’s work on producing descriptions of medieval manuscripts at Cambridge University Library appears to have ceased in late 1920 (see UA ULIB 7/3/72). According to the date inscribed in the first volume, he then began compiling a summary handlist of manuscripts (encompassing both medieval and post-medieval items) in the Two-Letter classmark sequence from 30 November 1920. He dated the completion of the first volume (Dd-Ee) to 25 May 1921, beginning the second volume (Ff-Hh) the same day and completing that nearly a year later on 9 May 1922, whereupon he began work on the third volume (Ii-Kk), which he ‘Finished 12 March 1923’. However, an inscription on the front endleaf of the first volume, dated 22 August 1923, suggests that his work on the volumes continued until at least a few months before his death.

The ‘catalogue’ is ruled in a series of columns on the recto and verso of each leaf. It comprises, on the recto, a manuscript’s running number, followed by brief, typically one-line entries on the contents of the manuscript (or more if further detail was required), together with its date of origin and the size of the item (according to the Library’s own internal measurement system, and expressed in upper-case capital letters based on those incised into a dedicated ruler, known as the ‘stick’). On the verso, further summary information about the manuscript was recorded: provenance, languages, former classmarks and, occasionally, bibliographical references.

The handlist contains a couple of annotations by the then Librarian, Alwyn Faber Scholfield, including one to the ‘title-page’ of the first volume that attributed the work to Sayle after

his death in 1924. There are further, scattered notes and corrections by B.F.C. Atkinson, including a bibliographical reference that indicates the handlist’s use in the Department of Manuscripts until at least 1937.