Medieval manuscripts from the collection of James Patrick Ronaldson Lyell (1871-1948).

James P. R. Lyell (1871-1948) was a member of a London firm of solicitors. He bequeathed the residue of his estate to the University of Oxford for the foundation of a Lyell Readership in Bibliography. He left the choice of 100 manuscripts, of medieval or later date, to the Bodleian Library out of the total of some 250 medieval manuscripts and a small number of post-medieval manuscripts then in his possession.

The hundred manuscripts chosen for the Bodleian are all medieval, except MS. 39 which is a sixteenth-century copy of a fifteenth-century text. Besides them, eleven medieval manuscripts in the Bodleian in the series 'MSS. Lyell empt.' were bought by the Library from Lyell's executors.