In 2004, Professor Linne Mooney was able to identify the scrivener who worked for 14th century poet Geoffrey Chaucer as an Adam Pinkhurst. Mooney, then a professor at the University of Maine and a visiting fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, was able to match Pinkhurst's flamboyantly-written signature on an oath he signed to his lettering on an early manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a copy thought to be closely derived from Chaucer's holograph.[1]
Not only is it significant in shedding light on the relationship between a writer, his scrivener and their manuscripts at that time, it also adds detail to one of Chaucer's shortest works. Chaucer words unto Adam his scrivener takes the scribe to task for the many errors he introduces and the amount of work Chaucer has to do correcting them.
Pinkhurst had in fact been suggested as a possible candidate for "Adam scrivener" as early as the late 1920s, but modern techniques of handwriting analysis have enabled a more firm identification to be made.[2]
Pinkhurst is identified as the scribe of two important manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales: the Hengwrt Manuscript, now thought to be closest to Chaucer's own drafts, and the Ellesmere Chaucer, a more heavily-edited and polished work. Based on their shared work on another manuscript, Pinkhurst has been suggested as a colleague of "Scribe D", another copyist of the Tales, and both scribes may have worked for the same bookseller or moved in the same literary circles.[3]