The Vercelli Book is one of the oldest of the Old English Poetic Codices, one of the others being the Junius manuscript, is one of the how many major codices of Old English literature?
Junius manuscript The Junius manuscript is one of the four major codices of Old English literature. Written in the 10th century, it contains poetry dealing with Biblical subjects in Old English, the vernacular language of Anglo-Saxon England. Modern editors have determined that the manuscript is made of four poems, to which they have given the titles "Genesis", "Exodus", "Daniel", and "Christ and Satan". The identity of their author is unknown. For a long time, scholars believed them to be the work of Cædmon, accordingly calling the book the Cædmon manuscript. This theory has been discarded due to the significant differences between the poems.
The Pilgrim's Tale The Pilgrim's Tale is an English anti-monastic poem. It was probably written ca. 1536–38, since it makes references to events in 1534 and 1536 – i.e., the Lincolnshire Rebellion – and borrows from The Plowman's Tale and the 1532 text by William Thynne of Chaucer's "Romaunt of the Rose", which is cited by page and line. It remains the most mysterious of the pseudo-Chaucerian texts. In his 1602 edition of the "Works of Chaucer", Thomas Speght mentions that he hoped to find this elusive text. A prefatory advertisement to the reader in the 1687 edition of the "Works" speaks of an exhaustive search for "The Pilgrim's Tale", which had proved fruitless.