Essays on the writing and textual culture of Europe in the middle ages. Medieval Europe was characterized by a sophisticated market for the production, exchange and sale of written texts. This volume brings together papers on a range of topics, centred on manuscript studies and textual criticism, which explore these issues from a pan-European perspective. They examine the prolonged and varied processes through which Europe's different parts entered into modern reading, writing and communicative practices, drawing on a range ofapproaches and perspectives; they consider material culture, multilingualism in texts and books, book history, readers, audience and scribes across the Middle Ages. Dr Aidan Conti teaches in the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen; Dr Orietta Da Rold teaches in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge; Dr Philip Shaw teaches at the School of English, University of Leicester. Contributors: Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Stewart Brookes, Aidan Conti, Orietta Da Rold, Helen Fulton, Marilena Maniaci, Debora Matos, Annina Seiler, Peter A. Stokes, Nadia Togni, Svetlana Tsonkova, Matilda Watson, George Younge.

New essays reappraising the history of the book, manuscripts, and texts. The dynamic fields of the history of the book and the sociology of the text are the areas this volume investigates, bringing together ten specially commissioned essays that between them demonstrate a range of critical and materialapproaches to medieval, early modern, and digital books and texts. They scrutinize individual medieval manuscripts to illustrate how careful re-reading of evidence permits a more nuanced apprehension of production, and receptionacross time; analyse metaphor for our understanding of the Byzantine book; examine the materiality of textuality from Beowulf to Pepys and the digital work in the twenty-first century; place manuscripts back into specific historical context; and re-appraise scholarly interpretation of significant periods of manuscript and print production in the later medieval and early modern periods. All of these essays call for a new assessment of the ways in which we read books and texts, making a major contribution to book history, and illustrating how detailed focus on individual cases can yield important new findings. Contributors: Elaine Treharne, Erika Corradini, Julia Crick, Orietta Da Rold, A.S.G. Edwards, Martin K. Foys, Whitney Anne Trettien, David L. Gants, Ralph Hanna, Robert Romanchuk, Margaret M. Smith, Liberty Stanavage.

The scholarship and teaching of manuscript studies has been transformed by digitisation, rendering previously rarefied documents accessible for study on a vast scale. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval British Manuscripts orientates students in the complex, multidisciplinary study of medieval book production and contemporary display of manuscripts from c.600-1500. Accessible explanations draw on key case studies to illustrate the major methodologies and explain why skills in understanding early book production are so critical for reading, editing, and accessing a rich cultural heritage. Chapters by leading specialists in manuscript studies range from explaining how manuscripts were stored, to revealing the complex networks of readers and writers which can be understood through manuscripts, to an in depth discussion on the Wycliffite Bible.

Orietta Da Rold provides a detailed analysis of the coming of paper to medieval England, and its influence on the literary and non-literary culture of the period. Looking beyond book production, Da Rold maps out the uses of paper and explains the success of this technology in medieval culture, considering how people interacted with it and how it affected their lives. Offering a nuanced understanding of how affordance influenced societal choices, Paper in Medieval England draws on a multilingual array of sources to investigate how paper circulated, was written upon, and was deployed by people across medieval society, from kings to merchants, to bishops, to clerks and to poets, contributing to an understanding of how medieval paper changed communication and shaped modernity.

The scholarship and teaching of manuscript studies has been transformed by digitisation, rendering previously rarefied documents accessible for study on a vast scale. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval British Manuscripts orientates students in the complex, multidisciplinary study of medieval book production and contemporary display of manuscripts from c.600–1500. Accessible explanations draw on key case studies to illustrate the major methodologies and explain why skills in understanding early book production are so critical for reading, editing, and accessing a rich cultural heritage. Chapters by leading specialists in manuscript studies range from explaining how manuscripts were stored, to revealing the complex networks of readers and writers which can be understood through manuscripts, to an in depth discussion on the Wycliffite Bible.

Orietta Da Rold provides a detailed analysis of the coming of paper to medieval England, and its influence on the literary and non-literary culture of the period. Looking beyond book production, Da Rold maps out the uses of paper and explains the success of this technology in medieval culture, considering how people interacted with it and how it affected their lives. Offering a nuanced understanding of how affordance influenced societal choices, Paper in Medieval England draws on a multilingual array of sources to investigate how paper circulated, was written upon, and was deployed by people across medieval society, from kings to merchants, to bishops, to clerks and to poets, contributing to an understanding of how medieval paper changed communication and shaped modernity.