This book is the second volume of University of London's HANDBOOK OF OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC and includes reading selections and a glossary prepared by R. Auty. The first volume, Grammar, was written by Grigore Nandris and may be the greatest primer of Old Church Slavonic ever written. This second volume is a fine complement.



The various texts come in three groups. The first is that of Glagolitic manuscripts, although with the except of a brief Glagolitic sample from the Kyiv Folia these are presented in Cyrillic transliteration. The selections in this group come from Codex Zographensis, Codex Marianus, Codex Assemanianus, the Kyiv Folia (here called the Kiev Missal), Psalterium Sinaiticium, Euchologium Sinaiticum, and Glagolita Clozianus. The second group of selections come from Cyrillic manuscripts, these being Tsar Samuel's Inscription (of 993), Savvina Kniga, and Codex Suprasliensis. The third group are selections from texts with marked local characteristics: Ostromir's Gospel-Book (called the first extant writing in Old Russian), the Prague Fragments, and the idiosyncratic Freising Texts which are presented in their Germanic script.



To show the reader the variety of style among these various manuscripts, Auty further gives the reader five translations of Luke 10:25-10:37. The glossary can be found at the end of the book, which due to its breadth is must-have even if you don't intend to read the selections.



Although the reader is a most useful tool and belongs in the library of any student of OCS, it does have some faults. The resources were not available to typeset everything in a uniform fashion, so the selections as presented through photocopies from various earlier editions. Some selections, like that from Codex Suprasliensis, are supremely readable, but some others like the selection from Ostromir's Gospel-Book are hard on the eye. Also, as it was published in 1960, Auty's reader came to early to include selections from the Eninskij Apostol or the 1959 edition of Glagolita Clozianus. For that, and for other bits from the texts represented here, I'd recommend K. A. Vojlova's STAROSLAVJANSKIJ JAZYK (Moscow: Drofa, 2003) which is quite inexpensive.