Medieval Manuscripts in Post-Medieval England

Book excerpt: Two themes uniting the essays in this collection are the provenance and history of medieval manuscripts during the Middle Ages, and the fates that befell them in England in the period after the invention of printing and the 16th-century dissolution of the religious houses and visitations of the universities. The section 'Libraries and collectors' includes papers on seven major English collectors of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the section 'Manuscripts' concerns the fates of five manuscripts or groups of manuscripts from England, Belgium and Italy. Of the other chapters one is concerned with the post-medieval history of the library of All Souls College, Oxford, and another with the provenance of hundreds of manuscripts in the Harleian collection in the British Library. For this volume Andrew Watson has provided extensive additional notes and indexes.