Essays exploring different aspects of late medieval and early modern manuscript and book culture. Late medieval manuscripts and early modern print history form the focus of this volume. It includes new work on the compilation of some important medieval manuscript miscellanies and major studies of merchant patronage and of a newly revealed woman patron, alongside explorations of medieval texts and the post-medieval reception history of Langland, Chaucer and Nicholas Love. It thus pays a fitting tribute to the career of Professor A.S.G. Edwards, highlighting his scholarly interests and demonstrating the influence of his achievements. Carol M. Meale is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol; the late Derek Pearsall was Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and Honorary Research Professor at the University of York. Contributors: Nicolas Barker, J.A. Burrow, A.I. Doyle, Martha W. Driver, Susanna Fein, Jane Griffiths, Lotte Hellinga, Alfred Hiatt, Simon Horobin, Richard Linenthal, Carol M. Meale, Orietta Da Rold, John Scattergood, Kathleen L. Scott, Toshiyuki Takamiya, John J. Thompson.

The essays in this collection pertain to art history, medieval Latin culture both ecclesiastic and legal, the history of vernacular literatures, and the devotional practices of the laity. They reflect the patronage of authors and manuscript painters, from the royal through the monastic to the urban middle class, and they trace the sometimes astonishing afterlife of manuscripts. The subject matter of these studies ranges chronologically from late antiquity to the later Middle Ages, adding the emergent medievalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its geographic breadth extends through the major Western cultures and literatures, from England to Italy, Germany, and France. Its wide range in time and space reflects the lifetime of manuscript research, teaching, and collecting by its honorees, Richard and Mary Rouse.A particular emphasis distinguishes this volume from other such collections: its stress on the use, and usefulness, of medieval manuscripts in the teaching of most historical disciplines in Western culture, from the broad undergraduate survey (of art, literature, history) to the specialized graduate seminar. In the last half century, public colleges and universities have increasingly appreciated the pedagogical opportunities inherent in building, through gift and purchase, collections of medieval manuscripts, formerly thought to be the province only of wealthy private schools. No similar collection of manuscript studies exhibits so clearly the role of medieval manuscripts in teaching. The specialist authors represented in this volume have displayed, over the whole of their careers, an ability to combine the highest caliber of research with an eagerness to make their subject accessible to others through teaching and writing and public lectures. The essays offer the results of new and sometimes technical research, set forth in a manner intelligible not only to the expert but to the interested amateur.

A study of the conditions of the production and distribution of literature from the fall of the Roman Empire to the close of the seventeenth century.

Perceptions of Medieval Manuscripts takes as its starting point an understanding that a medieval book is a whole object at every point of its long history. As such, medieval books can be studied most profitably in a holistic manner as objects-in-the-world. This means readers might profitably account for all aspects of the manuscript in their observations, from the main texts that dominate the codex to the marginal notes, glosses, names, and interventions made through time. This holistic approach allows us to tell the story of the book's life from the moment of its production to its use, collection, breaking-up, and digitization—all aspects of what can be termed 'dynamic architextuality'. The ten chapters include detailed readings of texts that explain the processes of manuscript manufacture and writing, taking in invisible components of the book that show the joy and delight clearly felt by producers and consumers. Chapters investigate the filling of manuscripts' blank spaces, presenting some texts never examined before, and assessing how books were conceived and understood to function. Manuscripts' heft and solidness can be seen, too, in the depictions of miniature books in medieval illustrations. Early manuscripts thus become archives and witnesses to individual and collective memories, best read as 'relics of existence', as Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes things. As such, it is urgent that practices fragmenting the manuscript through book-breaking or digital display are understood in the context of the book's wholeness. Readers of this study will find chapters on multiple aspects of medieval bookness in the distant past, the present, and in the assurance of the future continuity of this most fascinating of cultural artefacts.

The twenty-eight essays in this collection showcase cutting-edge research in manuscript studies, encompassing material from late antiquity to the Renaissance. The volume celebrates the exceptional contribution of John Lowden to the study of medieval books.