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.

Annotated bibliography covering two centuries of scholarly criticism on the extensive corpus of medieval saints' legends. with the assistance of Margaret RogersonSaints' legends are being increasingly recognised as one of the most important genres of the middle ages, and attract much critical attention. This volume surveys the scholarly literatureof the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on the extensive Middle English corpus. It also provides a conspectus of the genre's history in the Middle English period, and its place in the development of the modern discipline of Middle English, while both the introduction and the annotations give attention to the problematic boundaries between genres and to the issues involved in separating out texts from their manuscript contexts. General studies of the corpus as a whole are covered, as well as discussions and editions of individual legends, of the various extended cycles of legends, and of sermon collections that include hagiographic legends and exempla; the volume has been structured so as to provide an overview of the research on major works [for example the South English Legendary and St Erkenwald], and authors such as Osbern Bokenham, John Capgrave, William Caxton and John Mirk. It includesan Index of Scholars and Critics keyed to the Bibliography, an Index of Middle English Texts that covers all works, of whatever genre, mentioned in the annotations, and an Index of Manuscripts that gathers the references to the over 170 manuscripts cited.

This volume completes the first uniform edition of the Early Middle English Ancrene Wisse Group. It contains Sawles Warde from the Katherine Group, and the Wooing Group of lyrical meditations. These works, originally written for devout women, are of unusual literary and linguistic interest. The readings of all the manuscripts are printed in parallel for easy comparison, presenting the various versions of the Wooing Group in a more cohesive form than in existing editions. Paleographical and textual notes are provided, along with frequency wordlists and a selection of notes from an unpublished edition by E. J. Dobson.

The Ancrene Wisse is perhaps the most notable monument of Middle English prose, its influence evident from the time of its composition in the early thirteenth century until at least the Reformation. As the only Early Middle English work of considerable length to survive in more than two copies, it is a unique resource for the study of textual variation according to dialect, date, milieu and stylistic preferences. This edition presents four versions-those of the early Corpus, Cleopatra and Nero manuscripts, and the late and substantially modernised version of the Vernon manuscript. To facilitate comparison, they are printed in parallel form, line by line, and supplied with extensive notes. This volume, containing the latter portion of the text and wordlists, complements Vol. 7 in this series.