This collection of essays signifies how much influence Mary C. Erler has had over the development of book history and the question of how we interrogate medieval manuscripts and documents to reveal the characters and intentions of their readers. This is a welcome addition to the ever-evolving field of book history in the twenty-first century, makes a good medieval counterpart to the excellent work being done by David Pearson in promoting the provenance of early printed books, and is directly relatable to Robert Darnton's key question, “What is the history of books?”
Although focusing mainly on the late medieval period, Reading and Writing in Medieval England covers a wide variety of the ways manuscript studies can be applied, such as literary or textual criticism, as in Joyce Coleman's chapter on Troilus and Cressida. Coleman examines the role of the book within the text, comparing the emphasis placed on it in versions by Chaucer and Boccaccio. Books as currency is a topic touched on by Caroline M. Barron, who in researching the wills and bequeathals of Beatrice Melreth and her family members draws out the importance of devotional reading to an urban laywoman. Melreth's merchant husband apparently had little interest in books (as illustrated by the omission of them in his will), yet Beatrice's will left her private devotional texts to her sister, suggesting the intimacy of her relationship with her books.
Sheila Lindenbaum continues the theme of merchants and their relationship with books in her chapter on the intellectualism of Londoners. Referencing the assumption that medieval merchants owned books as commodities but not for intellectual stimulation, Lindenbaum considers the constant interaction and movement of ideas between the city and those educated at Oxford and Cambridge, especially when those scholars moved to London and taught merchants’ sons.
Joel T. Rosenthal's chapter, “Social Memory, Literacy, and Piety in Fifteenth-Century Proofs of Age,” is an absolutely delightful insight into how the book as a physical object embedded itself into the psyche of ordinary people. Twelve jurors were needed to prove that an heir or heiress was old enough to receive their inheritance, and by drawing on social memories, including baptism, war, and pilgrimage, they formed a communal memory pool. There are touching accounts of local residents recalling the baptism event of the person in question by remembering the role of the book in the proceedings. Despite probably being illiterate themselves, the signing of the church register or of being asked to carry or hold the liturgical book for the priest had etched itself into their memory, demonstrating the powerful presence the codex possessed, even to those unable to read.
Art history and visual imagery is another aspect of manuscript studies explored here through the Queen Mary Psalter. Kathryn A. Smith's chapter looks at the correlation between art and text against the backdrop of the uneasy relationship with Judaism in the early fourteenth century. It also explores genre crossing by using romance models for biblical images.
An important thread repeated in various essays in this volume is the gendered use of books. This is particularly explored by Michael G. Sargent when looking at the book networks of giving and receiving among religious women, focusing on the Scale of Perfection, of which Syon had three extant copies. Sargent considers how the female reader would have been fully immersed—intellectually, emotionally, and physically—in the action of reading aloud. This has been termed “affective literacy,” and Sargent goes further to suggest that women's affective literacy “occupies not so much a hybrid or liminal space between clerical or lay literacy,” but a place of its own alongside these two (136).
Heather Blatt's chapter on book accessories is also focused on the women at Syon, exploring fascinating gender differences through the use of book furniture—an area that has previously received little attention. Highlighting the static versus the mobile, Blatt examines how medieval men were often depicted with heavy books, in studious surroundings with sturdy book rests, whereas women were often shown walking with smaller, handheld books, in a far more intimate relationship. The men take themselves to the books, whereas women carry their books with them. Also discussed is the use of bookmarks and how they were useful for women, who were encouraged to read contemplatively in the late medieval period, in a nonlinear way, using bookmarks to return to passages to reflect further.
Chapter 8 again picks up on the scribal networks, using the example of the Icelandic poem Enska Vísan, and the transcribing of old folk tales in the nineteenth century to stop them being lost. Martin Chase demonstrates how, from the late medieval period to the modern age, a vast network of borrowing and copying existed as part of the Icelandic book culture among priests, government officials, merchants, clerks, and farmers. The final chapter, “Reading the Real Housewives of John Fox's Book of Martyrs,” takes us into the Reformation period, discussing how, for women, the domestic and spiritual worlds blended seamlessly into each other, picking up again the theme of private devotion in their everyday surroundings, such as when caring for the sick or dead. John Foxe privileged women in domestic roles in his martyrology, and using personal stories, he depicted pain and suffering to create pathos rather than awe, in contrast to the perfection of medieval martyrologies.
This collection of essays gives a wide-ranging overview of the use of books in the medieval period, considering them not just as physical objects but as part of a network structures that were in operation, including the portrayals of gender and class, which particularly relate to the themes pioneered by Mary Erler. One aspect not fully explored is evidence of physical interactions with books, for example, when images have been worn away through repeated touching or kissing, or manuscripts worn as “birth girdles,” which does add another dimension to the way books were used in medieval England. That aside, this is an important contribution to book history, adding further reflection on the way books were read, shared, depicted, and regarded in the medieval period.
