Cotton library in the context of "Gawain Poet"

The Nowell Codex is the second of two manuscripts comprising the bound volume Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, one of the four major Old English poetic manuscripts. It is most famous as the manuscript containing the unique copy of the epic poem Beowulf. In addition to this, it contains first a fragment of The Life of Saint Christopher, then the more complete texts Wonders of the East and Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, and, after Beowulf, a poetic translation of Judith. Due to the fame of Beowulf, the Nowell Codex is also sometimes known simply as the Beowulf manuscript. The manuscript is located within the British Library with the rest of the Cotton collection.

Asser (/ˈæsər/; Welsh: [ˈasɛr]; died c. 909) was a Welsh monk from St David's, Dyfed, who became Bishop of Sherborne in the 890s. About 885 he was asked by Alfred the Great to leave St David's and join the circle of learned men whom Alfred was recruiting for his court. After spending a year at Caerwent because of illness, Asser accepted.

In 893, Asser wrote a biography of Alfred, called the Life of King Alfred. The manuscript survived to modern times in only one copy, which was part of the Cotton library. That copy was destroyed in a fire in 1731, but transcriptions that had been made earlier, together with material from Asser's work which was included by other early writers, have made it possible to reconstruct the work. The biography is the main source of information about Alfred's life and provides far more information about Alfred than is known about any other early English ruler. Asser assisted Alfred in his translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, and possibly with other works.

The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland ("Original Chronicle of Scotland") is a history of Scotland from the beginning of the world until the accession of King James I. Attributed to Andrew of Wyntoun, a learned scholar of the time, it is one of the only manuscripts composed in Scots verse before the seventeenth century, though it is also said to be written in northern English. Wyntoun himself calls his language "Ynglys".

The Cronykil survives in eleven manuscripts, such as those in the Cotton library, the Harleian library, and the library of the faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh. The purest is the Royal MS, Brit. Museum. There is speculation over the date of the Royal manuscript, but scholars have determined that it likely could not have been written prior to 1420. (Wyntoun was born around 1350.) Andrew of Wyntoun and John of Fordun were contemporary historians, and though they did not know of each other, they share a claim to the title of original historian of Scotland..

The Pearl Manuscript (British Library MS Cotton Nero A X/2), also known as the Gawain manuscript, is an illuminated manuscript produced somewhere in northern England in the late 14th century or the beginning of the 15th century. It is one of the best-known Middle English manuscripts, the only one containing alliterative verse solely, and the oldest surviving English manuscript to have full-page illustrations. It contains the only surviving copies of four of the masterpieces of medieval English literature: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience. It has been described as "one of the greatest manuscript treasures for medieval literature", and "the most famous of all romance manuscripts".

The "Gawain Poet" (/ˈɡɑːweɪn, ˈɡæ-, -wɪn, ɡəˈweɪn/ GA(H)-wayn, -⁠win, gə-WAYN; fl. late 14th century), or less commonly the "Pearl Poet", is the name given to the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an alliterative poem written in 14th-century Middle English. Its author appears also to have written the poems Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness; some scholars suggest the author may also have composed Saint Erkenwald. Save for the last (found in BL-MS Harley 2250), all these works are known from a single surviving manuscript, the British Library holding 'Cotton MS' Nero A.x. This body of work includes some of the most highly-regarded poetry written in Middle English.

The Gawain Poet is unidentified. Various scholars have suggested that the poem is attributable to a member of the landed Massey family of Cheshire, and in particular John Massey of Cotton. This is not widely accepted, however, and the labels "Pearl Poet" or "Gawain Poet" are still preferred.

A shelfmark is a mark in a book or manuscript that denotes the cupboard or bookcase where it is kept as well as the shelf and possibly even its location on the shelf. The closely related term pressmark (from press, meaning cupboard) denotes only the cupboard or case. It is distinct from a call number, which is the code under which a book or manuscript is registered and which is used to identify it when ordering it. Sometimes a shelfmark or pressmark may be used as a call number, but in other cases the call number contains no information about the book's physical location. In certain American institutions, shelfmark and call number are combined to create a long code containing information on location, classification, size, binding, author and date. Shelfmarks and pressmarks were usually written, inscribed or stamped on the pastedowns. When a book was moved, the old shelfmark was usually crossed out and a new one added. Old shelfmarks can sometimes provide valuable information about a manuscript's provenance.

Shelfmarks originated in the early Middle Ages, usually as combinations of numbers and letters, probably indicating the cupboard and shelf. Letters later came to be assigned to specific batch acquisitions. In the modern period, university libraries often organized their collections by subject and indicated the faculty in the shelfmark. As libraries grew larger, alphanumeric shelfmarks were augmented with Greek letters and the symbols of the zodiac. By the seventeenth century the Cotton library incorporates the names of Roman emperors in it shelfmarks, based on the location of imperial busts in Robert Cotton's original library.