"The eighteen Old English homilies that survive, either whole or in part, in Princeton, Princeton University Library, MS Scheide M71 have been commonly known as the Blickling Homilies since the edition of Richard Morris was published under that title in 1874-1880. Today the Blickling manuscript is known mainly for the homilies, written by two scribes working in tandem around the year 1000. The individual homilies were composed by a number of different authors, as linguistic and stylistic evidence demonstrate, and may have originated in various places and at various times. Even in the truncated state in which they have come down to us, the Blickling Homilies constitute the second-largest collection of anonymous Old English homilies that is extant, exceeded in size only by the Vercelli Homilies. Eight of the homilies are unique to the Blickling manuscript, and five of the other ten are not found whole elsewhere, but occur only in abridged or partial form in another manuscript. Selective as it is in its representation of the liturgical year, the Blickling collection seems to have been intended to provide texts suitable for preaching to laypeople on major feasts and important occasions for the instruction of the assembled faithful in penitential seasons, such as the Sundays in Lent and the Rogation Days. The homilies reflect an English religious culture that had not been thoroughly transformed by the Benedictine reform movement of the late tenth century, from which many of the homilies that survive in Old English, such as Ælfrics, sprang. The Blickling Homilies thus stand as an important witness to an earlier vernacular homiletic tradition in England and to its continued influence in and after Ælfrics day"-- Provided by publisher.