The chapters in Carolyn Twomey and Daniel Anlezark's edited volume, Meanings of Water in Early Medieval England, analyze the complex, often intersecting meanings of water in England from the 500s until the 1000s. Twomey and Anlezark explain in their introduction that they and the other contributing authors conceptualize water as “an aspect of the material world which has objective realities and physical continuity, but what is also embedded culturally in differing understandings of what water is” (14). The authors explore the tension this water presents for people living during this time, as water was seen as part of the fullness of Creation – something that both enabled human life but also was a major threat to human existence. Focusing on both physical interactions with water as well as early medieval conceptualizations of it, the work makes important contributions to medieval studies’ recent interest in water and to ecocritism and the blue humanities more broadly.

The work contains eleven chapters in addition to Twomey and Anlezark's introduction. Their placement within the volume is meant to encourage cross-disciplinary discussions, as they are arranged on a spectrum from those chapters that explore how medieval people interacted with actual bodies of water in England to those chapters that explore representations of water in material culture as well as exegetical and literary texts. The authors approach this topic from a wide variety of disciplinary lenses such as archaeology, history, art history, religious studies, literature, and linguistics. Many chapters draw on the same sources. Beowulf and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and On Genesis serve as important comparative points in most of the chapters. The authors working with written texts analyze exegetical texts such as the Canterbury Commentaries, saints’ lives (e.g., the Vita Ceolfridi, Vita Oswaldi), the monk Felix's Vita of Guthlac of Crowland and its Old English translations, poems such as The Seafarer, Andreas, Metrical Epilogue, the Pastoral Care, Boethian Metre 20, and Solomon and Saturn II, and the Exeter Book. Elizabeth A. Alexander and Meg Boulton, whose chapters approach water through an art history lens, investigate Anglo-Saxon miniatures in the Antwerp Sedulius and the Harley Psalter and in sculptures such as the Easby Cross. Though the chapters focus on England, some do bring in Irish and patristic Christian sources, as well as sources from Scandinavia and Rome, for comparison points. The authors use these sources and their specific focus on water to explore the connections between people and the natural world, noting throughout how water both defined and was defined by the early medieval world.

The interdisciplinary approach of the volume is its major strength, as it allows the chapters to layer together to provide the reader with multiple perspectives on the same source material. For example, Della Hook's chapter on how waterscapes played sacred and secular roles both before and after the spread of Christianity coupled with Twomey's chapter on baptism in English rivers from the 500s to the 800s reveal the watery worlds in which many of the authors and subjects of the literary works explored in subsequent chapters dwelled. Learning about the physical placement of monasteries, the way early Christians were likely using rivers for baptism, and the religious significances that clustered around water even in pre-Christian England allows the reader to gain an understanding of these texts that incorporate the material world in which these people lived and wrote. For instance, knowing about the placements of monasteries enriches Rebecca Shores's chapter on English waterways as soundscapes in Old English literature, as well as Helen Appleton's exploration of the Anglo-Saxon lives of Guthlac. They allow us to picture the Crowland in which Guthlac lived and the watery sounds the various people and literary characters in Shores's chapter heard and to make inferences about how the medieval authors’ locations near the waterways of England shaped the way they incorporated water into these texts. This interdisciplinarity not only functions across chapters but also within chapters, thanks in part to the volume's commitment to viewing water both as a physical substance and as a cultural construct. Though Anlezark's chapter explores three Old English poems, analyzing the chronology of these works and tracing lines of influence of texts from King Alfred's court on Anglo-Saxon classrooms, Anlezark is careful to note Alfred's trips to Rome and his viewing of the Aqua Claudia, which might have influenced the contents of these works.

More maps of early medieval England would have improved the reading experience of the work. Such maps do appear in Hook's chapter, but they are absent from the rest of the volume. Given the work's desire to appeal to scholars interested in environmental studies more broadly, such maps would have helped spatially orient scholars more familiar with other time periods and geographical areas. They would also have helped underscore the volume's commitment to exploring water both in its physical and conceptual aspects.

That one quibble aside, this volume is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on water in the medieval period. It also has much to contribute to environmental studies. Water is understood throughout as a physical substance that acts on human beings and the natural world as much as it is acted upon by the people who try to make sense of it. Acknowledging water's own agency allows the authors to explore the links between natural and conceptual worlds and shows readers that though understandings of water have certainly shifted from the early medieval period to our own, the material and necessities that water provides for us remain similar.