Medieval England was full of books, but when the country’s monasteries were suppressed by King Henry VIII their libraries were scattered and lost. Twentieth-century scholarship has been enterprising in establishing what survives and in discovering what libraries once held. This volume, by the country’s leading expert in the field, paints a new picture of the history of books and libraries in medieval England from the totality of the available evidence.To be able to reconstruct the transmission of culture in the Middle Ages, we need to understand and employ with care the evidence of the surviving books on the one hand and medieval library catalogues on the other. Libraries and Books in Medieval England seeks to move away from the modern conceptualisation of the monastic library as the only venue for medieval book provision, broadening awareness of the wider book economy, including private ownership and the birth of the book trade. The result, based on the author’s Lyell Lectures in the University of Oxford, is a work that offers an unparalleled view of the field.
