Traditional handbooks of Latin palaeography offer a history of Latin script (i.e. based on the Latin alphabet, irrespective of the language of which it was a graphic expression) from the Roman period to the age of humanism, sometimes with hints at the scripts of the first decades of the sixteenth century. Often, but not always, the history of script is accompanied by a few short chapters or paragraphs on writing materials and writing tools, external characteristics of the written heritage (structure, layout, decoration, binding), activity of writing and copying (also abbreviations, punctuation, numerals). This is the case with the main handbooks of Latin palaeography, such as J. Mallon's (1952), G. Cencetti's (1954–1956; reprint with a bibliographical update 1967), B. Bischoff's (1979, 4th ed. 2009), A. Petrucci's (1989, 2nd ed. 1992), P. Cherubini's and A. Pratesi's (2010). These handbooks (or introductions, guides, outlines) are designed for advanced university students or more often for palaeographers, codicologists, philologists, art historians, cultural historians and manuscript cataloguers.

In the volume under review palaeography is not seen as an isolated discipline, but as one intimately linked to codicology and to the cultural settings and contexts of medieval books (what L. Boyle called ‘integral palaeography’). The book consists of 63 articles written by leading international scholars in the field of palaeography, codicology, cultural aspects of manuscripts (such as orality and the written world, scribes and the book trade), history of medieval libraries and scriptoria, and some specific genres of the manuscript book (such as legal manuscripts, Books of Hours, miscellany, florilegia, theological texts, glossed manuscripts and glossaries). Very unusual but significant is the final chapter on manuscript cataloguing (pp. 980–1017), where C. Dutschke illustrates a very useful template for a description of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in codex format. Contributions by different specialists (a single author could not even think of writing such a book), inevitably with different approaches and methodologies, and the openness to different fields of study constitute the great richness of the volume, but also mark to some extent its limits: graduate students or incipient palaeographers will judge certain contributions, written by specialists, to be too arduous or too dense; on the other hand, the specialist in a given field will remain hungry, not finding what narrowly specialised works could provide. It is really difficult to satisfy the demands of such a various audience, but that is not the purpose of the book.

The Handbook is divided into five parts: (1) ‘Script’, from the Roman heritage through early medieval scripts, Carolingian minuscule, Gothic and Humanistic script; (2) ‘Material Embodiment and Techniques’; (3) ‘Cultural Setting’; (4) ‘Selected Scriptoria and Libraries’; and (5) ‘Varieties of Book Usage’. The editors could not include a chapter on medieval binding, a section on decoration and illumination (there is just a chapter on pen-flourished decoration) for reasons of length and cost. Each contribution is accompanied by a specific bibliography. Especially in the first part the reader is provided with many plates and illustrations to make the characterisation of scripts clearer. Reference to manuscripts is copious throughout (see the ‘Index of Manuscripts’). Here scripts and regions are also covered that in traditional handbooks normally receive little attention: Roman scripts (old Roman cursive and new Roman cursive), the Visigothic script, Gothic script in the Netherlands, in Bohemia and Moravia, in Hungary and Slovakia. Punctuation, abbreviations and numerals are also adequately treated (pp. 5–8, 9–24, 25–36). In the section dedicated to humanistic scripts one finds rather surprisingly a chapter on Byzantium and the West (pp. 553–66), where the early humanist interest in Greek language and culture is illustrated, inevitably in a generic manner. On the other hand, some scripts are missing: Gothic book scripts in the Iberian Peninsula or a chapter on the ‘mercantesca’, the cursive and ligatured handwriting used especially by merchants and other businesspeople for account books and business letters, but also for vernacular texts, beginning in the second half of the thirteenth century in Florence, then in Tuscany and in central and Northern Italy until the first half of the sixteenth century. In contrast to some previous overviews, epigraphic scripts have not been dealt with (rightly, I think). Sixteenth-century scripts are not treated, just a few words are dedicated to German ‘Fraktur’ and ‘Kurrent’; cursive Italian ‘cancelleresca’ and Italian ‘bastarda’ are missing as well as a chapter on the treatises of early writing masters (like Ludovico degli Arrighi and Giovanni Antonio Tagliente) and on their contribution to the evolution of script. Because of the variety of contributions, a terminology both of the palaeographical analysis and of general writing categories might have been useful: form, structure of the letters, ductus, writing angle, majuscule, minuscule, normal, usual, cursive etc.

We must be grateful to the editors, Coulson and Babcock, for their courage in organising this handbook. This impressive work will be of great value, both as an indispensable handbook of Latin palaeography and as a necessary starting point for research in palaeography, codicology and the cultural history of the Latin Middle Ages.