New research into medieval English literature, with a particular focus on manuscripts and writing. This acclaimed study of English medieval manuscripts and early printed books - many items from Professor Takamiya's own collection - quickly sold out in hardcover. The subjects range from Saint Jerome to Tolkien, with particular concentrations on Chaucer, Gower, Malory and religious and historical writings of the late middle ages. There are essays examining the work of early printers such as Caxton and de Worde, and of bibliophiles and antiquarians in modern times. Befitting a tribute to a bibliophile, this volume has been handsomely designed by Lida Kindersley of the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop in Cambridge, and is extensively illustrated. The volume as a whole constitutes a substantial body of research on medieval English literature, and early books and manuscripts. Contributors: Richard Barber, Nicolas Barker, Richard Beadle, N.F. Blake, Julia Boffey, Piero Boitani, Derek Brewer, Helen Cooper, A.I. Doyle, Martha W. Driver, A.S.G. Edwards, P.J.C. Field, Christopher de Hamel, Ralph Hanna, Lotte Hellinga, Kristian Jensen, Edward Donald Kennedy, Richard A. Linenthal, Jill Mann, Takami Matsuda, David McKitterick, Rosamond McKitterick, Linne R. Mooney, Ruth Morse, Daniel W. Mosser, Tsuyoshi Mukai, Paul Needham, M.B. Parkes, Derek Pearsall, Oliver Pickering, P.R. Robinson, Michael G. Sargent, John Scahill, Kathleen L. Scott, Jeremy J. Smith, Isamu Takahashi, John J. Thompson, Linda Ehrsam Voigts, Yoko Wada, Bonnie Wheeler, Patrick Zutshi.

New essays on late medieval manuscripts highlight the complicated network of their production and dissemination. One of the most important developments in medieval English literary studies since the 1980s has been the growth of manuscript studies. Long regarded as mere textual repositories, and treated superficially by editors, manuscripts are now acknowledged as centrally important in the study of later medieval texts. The essays collected here discuss aspects of the design and distribution of manuscripts in late medieval England, with a particular focus on vernacular manuscripts of the late fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Those in the first half consider material evidence for scribal decisions about design: these range from analysis of individual codices to broader discussions of particular types of manuscripts, both religious and secular. Later essays look at the evidence for the production and distribution of manuscripts of specific English texts or types of text. These include the major Middle English poems The Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman, as well as key religious works such as Love's Mirror, Hilton's Scale of Perfection, the Speculum Vitae and The Pricke of Conscience, all of which survive in significant numbers of manuscripts. The comparison of secular and devotional texts illuminates shared networks of production and dissemination, and increases our knowledge of regional and metropolitan book production in the period before printing. Contributors: DANIEL W. MOSSER, JACOB THAISEN, TAKAKO KATO, SHERRY L. REAMES, AMELIA GROUNDS, ALEXANDRA BARRATT, JULIAN M. LUXFORD, LINNE R. MOONEY, MICHAEL G. SARGENT, JOHNJ. THOMPSON, MARGARET CONNOLLY, RALPH HANNA, GEORGE R. KEISER.