The Nowell Codex is named after which 16th-century antiquarian?

The Nowell Codex is named after the 16th-century antiquarian Laurence Nowell.

Nowell was an English antiquarian, cartographer, and pioneering scholar of Old English. His name and the date 1563 were written on the first page of the manuscript, indicating his ownership or possession. That inscription later supplied the modern name “Nowell Codex.”

The codex is especially important because it preserves the only surviving manuscript copy of *Beowulf*. It also contains texts such as *The Wonders of the East*, a life of Saint Christopher, a translation of the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, and the poem *Judith*. The manuscript is generally dated around the turn of the first millennium, probably shortly after AD 1000.

Nowell should not be confused with Robert Cotton, who later acquired the manuscript and whose library classification produced the designation Cotton Vitellius A XV. Nor is the codex named after Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie or Franciscus Junius. Nowell’s contribution was as an early collector and student of Old English manuscripts, not as the poem’s author.