SOURCE: A Preface to De Nugis Curialium, by Walter Map, edited by Montague Rhodes James, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1914, pp. v-xxxix.

In the following excerpt from the introduction to his Latin transcription of De Nugis Curialium, James describes the physical condition of the manuscript from which he is working; discusses the errors made by an earlier transcriber (Thomas Wright); explains his own methods of transcription; speculates on the initial publication date of Map's work; and describes the contents of Map's work.

The treatise de Nugis Curialium of Walter Map is preserved in a single manuscript¹ of the end of the fourteenth century in the Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 851. A detailed description of the contents, which I owe to the great kindness of Mr. R. L. Poole, Keeper of the Archives, will be given in due course. It may be prefaced by a few remarks upon the provenance...