Working with Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts

Gale R. Owen-Crocker is Professor Emerita of The University of Manchester; she was formerly Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture and Director of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies. She was co-founder and for 15 years co-editor of the journal Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Her recent books include Clothing the Past: Surviving Garments from Early Medieval to Early Modern Western Europe (with Elizabeth Coatsworth, Brill, 2018), Sense and Feeling in Daily Living in the Early Medieval English World (co-editor with Maren Clegg Hyer, Liverpool University Press, 2020) and Textiles of the Viking North Atlantic (co-editor with Alexandra Lester-Makin, Boydell & Brewer, 2024).

• 1. Introduction(Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester, UK and Director of the AHRC-funded project 'The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain c. 700-1450' and Maria Carmela Cesario, Lecturer in Medieval English Language and Literature at Brasenose College, University of Oxford, UK);2. The construction and writing of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts(Alexander Rumble, Reader in Palaeography and Director of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies at the University of Manchester, UK)3. Manuscript sources of Old English prose(Donald Scragg, Emeritus Professor of Anglo-Saxon Studies at the University of Manchester, UK4. Manuscript sources of Old English poetry(Elaine Treharne, Professor of Medieval Literature at Florida State University, USA and Co-Director of the AHRC-funded project 'The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060-1220')5. A survey of Latin manuscripts(Gernot Wieland, Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Canada)6. Reading between (and beyond) the lines: glosses and notes in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts(Timothy Graham, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Institute for Medieval Studies, University of New Mexico, USA)7. Manuscript art(Catherine Karkov, Professor of Art History at the University of Leeds, UK)8. From manuscript to computer(Stuart Lee, Acting Director of University Computing Services and a teaching member of the English Faculty at the University of Oxford, UK and Daniel O'Donnell, Associate Professor of English, Chair of the Text Encoding Initiative and Director of the Digital Medievalist Project, University of Lethbridge, Canada)GlossaryIndex of ManuscriptsIndex

A clear, reliable, practical and beautifully illustrated introduction to the subject. The book envisions an audience that ranges from advanced undergraduates all the way to established scholars and even graphic artists, and while the undergraduates have the most to gain from the book, there is something here that everyone can learn from. A common aim of all these chapters is to survey what for many will be recognisable territory, but every chapter embodies original research, and it is inescapably clear that the contributors to this volume have spent a lot of time with manuscripts. The book as a whole contains 115 well-chosen illustrations, many in colour, including a generous number of full-page reproductions from a wide range of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The quality of discussion and analysis in every single chapter is uniformly quite high, but it’s the illustrations that will ensure this book’s success as a teaching tool. This is a brilliantly conceived book, and just as brilliantly executed, and it should be required reading for all students of Anglo-Saxon England. The four pages of ‘Further reading’ at the end of the volume are a useful next step for students who have no prior experience with manuscript study. This is a valuable and well-produced book, and I plan to use it the next time I teach a seminar on Anglo-Saxon manuscripts.Thomas N. Hall, Review of English Studies 61.252