Introducing English Medieval Book History: Manuscripts, their Producers and their Readers [Paperback]

This book is the first to address medieval book history for graduate students of medieval English literature. Ralph Hanna presents a history of the English medieval book through a series of examples centred on carefully chosen texts and their physical and cultural surrounds.This book offers an introduction to medieval English book-history through a sequence of exemplary analyses of commonplace book-historical problems. Rather than focus on bibliographical particulars, the volume considers a variety of ways in which scholars use manuscripts to discuss book culture, and it provides a wide-ranging introductory bibliography to aid in the study. All the essays try to suggest how the study of surviving medieval books might be useful in considering medieval literary culture more generally. Subjects covered include authorship, genre, discontinuous production, scribal individuality and community, the history of libraries and the history of book provenance. This is a first-rate book from a scholar at the forefront of palaeographical and bibliographical study; it will have a wide readership. It will be an excellent partner for the recent Owen-Crocker volume 'Working with Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts'. --Series Editors

Scholarship in this work is superb. Quotations, translations, bibliography are spot on. Professor Hanna's lifetime of intelligent work in the field glows at all points of discussion. --MS Referee

... this volume is testament to Hanna's erudition and knowledge as a book-history scholar, and careful, repeated reading will repay the reader with numerous insights into the key questions of book history and how to 'do' it. --Library

This book is the first to address medieval book history for graduate students of medieval English literature. Ralph Hanna presents a history of the English medieval book through a series of examples centred on carefully chosen texts and their physical and cultural surrounds.Ralph Hanna