Five manuscripts survive that contain Æfric's life of St Edmund:
London, British Library, Cotton Julius E. vii - early eleventh century
London, British Library, Cotton Otho B. x + Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson Q. e. 20 - early eleventh century
London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius D. xvii - mid eleventh century
Cambridge, University Library, Ii. 1. 33 - second half of the twelfth century
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 343 - second half of the twelfth century
Of these manuscripts, Cotton Julius E. vii is the most important and is the base text for the editions of both Skeat and M-R, though the latter normalise aberrant spellings and include readings from other manuscripts without indicating that they have done so. This manuscript belonged to Bury St Edmunds by the thirteenth century and was perhaps bound with London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. ii, fols. 2-85, Bury's copy of Abbo's passio and 'Herman's' De miraculis sancti Eadmundi. In Julius E. vii, the lives are arranged in order of their celebration through the church year.
Both Cotton Otho B. x and Cotton Vitellius D. xvii were heavily affected by the fire that swept through the Cotton Library in 1731. Consequently, both contain only partial texts of the Life. In Otho, the Life of Edmund is included in a group of lives of English saints: Swithun, St George and St Aethelthryth. The collection in Vitellius is less organised, but it is followed by a list of saints resting places in England.
The two twelfth-century manuscripts attest the interest in Ælfric after the Norman Conquest. The Cambridge manuscript, chiefly a Passional, omits Ælfric's introductory explanation of his source for the Life of St Edmund. Bodley 343 is a miscellaneous collection of homiletic pieces, including several not by Ælfric. No clear principle of arrangement is evident. The language of the homilies indicates the manuscript was probably copied somewhere in the West Midlands.