May 18, 1923

Sir Israel Gollancz, fellow and secretary of the British Academy and professor of English language and literature at King’s College, London, lectured on “The Poet and the Pearl.” Professor Gollancz’s study of the anonymous 14th century alliterative poem in Middle English known as “The Pearl” began with his publication in 1891 of The Pearl: An English Poem of the Fourteenth Century/re-Set in Modern English and continued through two subsequent limited editions—in 1918 to benefit the Red Cross and in 1921, “with modern renderings, together with Boccaccio’s Olympia.” His facsimile edition of the poem and three contemporary works for the Early English Text Society appeared from Oxford University Press in 1923.