Creating the Scholarship of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture

This publication provides the first account of the scholarship on the earliest sculpture (eighth-eleventh century) produced in Britain. Jane Hawkes considers the various encounters with the material that have been recorded textually (church records, antiquarian commentaries, travel literature, journal articles, early publications on early medieval art), and visually (sketches, paintings, etchings), within the context of the aims and objectives of the authors and artists, and the conventions within which they were working. Chapters will chart these from the time of the earliest (modern, post-Reformation) accounts of the sixteenth century through to the mid-twentieth century when the first book on Anglo-Saxon art was published. Hawkes thus charts the ways in which the scholarship has segued between art history and archaeology, and explains the reasons why this occurred and why it might have been denied within both disciplines. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, British studies, and medieval studies.