Cocatrice and Lampray Hay is our title for this edition of the Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS F 291, which contains 99 recipes written in English (showing signs, the experts claim, of East Anglian provenance). The recipes are remarkable for their close attention to detail and much greater information about quantities of ingredients than similar collections from earlier centuries. They include dishes such as the famous cocatrice or basilisk, which is a combination of pig and chicken constructed as a fabulous beast, to the more mundane, but more cookable, blancmanges, stewed oysters, croustades, pies, venison, beef and chicken dishes. The edition gives the original text, a translation into modern English, a full commentary, and notes for the modern cook who wishes to interpret each dish in his or her own kitchen. The volume closes with a glossary or recipe titles and a concordance of this collection supplementary to the editor's fuller and earlier concordance of all medieval English recipes, allowing the reader to place this group in some form of culinary context.

The great advantage for students of medieval English cookery is that there is an identifiable corpus of evidence in the manuscripts that have survived to the present day. Although there may be some new discoveries, in general terms the corpus is relatively stable. The beauty of this book is that it addresses the corpus as a whole and abstracts from it paradigm recipes for every medieval dish that we know about. With this book therefore a student can ask 'How did they cook rabbit stew?' and find a definitive answer, in modern English, with full references. This is a great step forward and the book will stand as a monument to the untiring efforts of the late Constance Hieatt to understand and interpret English cookery of the middle ages. The book is organised by category of dish (Pottage; Meat Dishes; Poultry and Game Birds; Fish; Eggs and Dairy Dishes; Sauces and Condiments, and Baked Dishes). For each dish the editor has chosen what is in her view the most typical example and, citing the source, translates the original text.

Lively, absorbing, often outrageously funny, Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is a work of genius, an undisputed classic that has held a special appeal for each generation of readers. The Canterbury Tales gather twenty-nine of literature's most enduring (and endearing) characters in a vivid group portrait that captures the full spectrum of medieval society, from the exalted Knight to the humble plowman. A graceful modren translation facing each page of the text allows the contemporary reader to enjoy the fast pace of these selections from The Canterbury Tales with the poetry of the Middle English original always at first hand.

The annual Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History is published by Pace University Press. The greater part of each volume is devoted to four or five substantial essays on the history of the book, with emphasis on the period of transmission from manuscript to print. The main focus is on English and continental works produced from 1350 to 1550. In addition, the journal includes brief notes on manuscripts and early printed books, descriptive reviews of recent works in the field, and notes on libraries and collections.