Key articles on the Bayeux tapestry collected in one volume, providing a comprehensive companion to its study. This volume presents a selection from the classic literature on the tapestry, providing a comprehensive companion to its study. The articles have been carefully chosen in order to provide a strong, balanced coverage of most aspects of the tapestry; all the major themes - the material fabric of the artefact, its origin, its relation to other early sources, its visual language, the form and function of the inscriptions, the work's general meaning and purpose, and the way it was perceived - are discussed in authoritative contributions collected here. The volume also includes substantial new essays by the editor on studying the Bayeux tapestry, and on its origin, art, and message. Contributors: RICHARD GAMESON, CHARLES STOTHARD, EDWARD FREEMAN, W.R. LETHERBY, CHARLES PRENTOUT, SIMONE BERTRAND, RENELEPELLEY, C.R. DODWELL, N.P. BROOKS, H.E.J. COWDREY, H.E. WALKER, RICHARD BRILLIANT, SHIRLEY ANNE BROWN, MICHAEL HERREN

This is the first comprehensive survey of the history of the book in Britain from Roman through Anglo-Saxon to early Norman times. The expert contributions explore the physical form of books, including their codicology, script and decoration; examine the circulation and exchange of manuscripts and texts between England, Ireland, the Celtic realms and the Continent; discuss the production, presentation and use of different classes of texts, ranging from fine service books to functional schoolbooks; and evaluate the libraries that can be associated with particular individuals and institutions. The result is an authoritative account of the first millennium of the history of books, manuscript-making and literary culture in Britain which, intimately linked to its cultural contexts, sheds vital light on broader patterns of political, ecclesiastical and cultural history extending from the period of the Vindolanda writing tablets through the age of Bede and Alcuin to the time of the Domesday Book.

The significance of the Bible in the life, thought and culture of the early Middle Ages can hardly be overstated. Here eleven linked studies, embracing palaeography, history, art history, theology and textual scholarship, examine and interpret the evidence of Bible manuscripts (including gospel books and Psalters) in their cultural context from late antiquity to the thirteenth century. Subjects include the earliest Bible manuscripts, the Gospels in a missionary context, the scriptorium of Tours, the development of the early glossed Psalter, the Old Testament in tenth- and eleventh-century England, the Italian Giant Bibles, the origins of the Paris Bible, the illustration of the early Gothic Psalter and the planning and production of the Hamburg Bible. Together these essays provide a broad-ranging, authoritative treatment of themes which are of central importance for the history and culture of the times.