The abbey of Bury St Edmunds was one of the oldest and richest monastic houses in medieval England with a liberty covering the whole of West Suffolk. Here at last is the modern study it deserves, the fruit of half a century of Antonia Gransden's meticulous scholarship. Although her original intention was a history of the abbey's entire existence from its pre-Conquest foundation until the Dissolution, the sheer volume of surviving evidence has led her to concentrate on the period between 1182 and 1301. Even this more modest undertaking will comprise two volumes, the first of which is reviewed here. Part i covers the abbacy of the famous Abbot Samson which lasted just under thirty years, while the shorter part ii deals with his four successors who, between them, ruled the abbey for another four decades. This imbalance is an inevitable consequence of the uneven distribution of the sources.

Abbot Samson has been well served by the chronicle of the incomparable Jocelin of Brakelond, here called Jocelin of Brackland following the probable derivation of his name from Brackland Street in Bury. For a period of some twenty years he provides an unrivalled picture of life inside a great black monk house; the austere and combative character of its abbot; the drama and politics of the shrine at the tomb of Edmund king and martyr, a money spinner in the same league as that of St Thomas at Canterbury, imperilled by fire in 1198; and, not least, insight into estate administration at a particularly significant time, when legal and economic developments threatened the possession of endowments. The fact that so little is known of Abbot Samson's successors does not necessarily imply that they were nonentities. Their abbacies were shorter, offering less scope for sustained policies, but it appears that Edmund of Walpole was imbued with the same reforming zeal.

The book comprises twenty-one short chapters and four appendices which cumulatively provide a vivid mosaic of monastic life at Bury in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Decent observance rather than white hot fervour reigned, much as one might expect of such a house at this period. However we should be alert to the risk of underestimating the quality of the community's spiritual life. Only its outward manifestations are documented. Moreover the all important veneration of St Edmund and the strong hagiographical tradition, which are fully examined here, hold relatively little appeal today. A detailed account of the flourishing secondary cults is also a useful reminder of an aspect of religious life that is often overlooked. The abbey appears to have owned some 3,000 books by the end of the Middle Ages, more than either Christchurch or St Augustine's at Canterbury, and some were among the most up-to-date texts of the day. Although the house was never renowned as a centre of learning, both masters and well-educated monks from its own school were to be found within its walls. All of which reflects well on the community. Against this we also get a picture of obsessive anxiety about the convent's rations revealed by the persistent overspending of the cellarer and resistance to the financial cutbacks of successive abbots. Like most closed communities there seems to have been no shortage of faction and intrigue. This came to the fore in the disputed election following the death of Abbot Samson. The account of what ensued provides insight into the realities of ‘free election’ and the means by which royal power was accommodated. The constant vigilance devoted to defending the abbey's privileges on this and other occasions echoes that found at other great houses. In particular there was a need to clarify the blurred division between the abbot's and convent's endowments in order to minimise a real danger of royal spoliation during vacancies.

The richest monastic houses of south-east England have almost all been the subject of modern studies. This account of Bury St Edmunds is distinctively different from its fellows. The author has aimed for a more rounded picture and in this she has succeeded admirably. Whereas the other histories for the most part concentrate on the growth of endowments and the exploitation of estates, neither of these aspects looms large here. Certainly the recovery of Mildenhall from Richard i for the sizeable sum of 1,000 marks is accorded due attention, but the time span of this volume is too early to permit analysis of the minutiae of estate management. Unusually, accounts do survive from the mid-thirteenth century and the importance of these for our knowledge of early accounting practice is made clear. Economic aspects of the abbey are dealt with in a long appendix, along with another examining the abbey mills. Either could just as well have been incorporated into the main body of the book. Arguably recent historiography has assigned too much importance to such matters; Gransden gives us a more balanced picture, albeit tantalising to historians brought up on traditional fare.

If there are limitations to the evidence for the manorial economy, they are as nothing compared to the loss of the monastic buildings. Like other abbey churches which were not destined for a future as cathedrals, the fabric was plundered for its stone, leaving little but footings and archaeological remains. The reconstruction pictured on the cover hints at former magnificence, but it is the written record which reveals here how building work and the expense it involved dominated the life of the house.

The history of medieval Suffolk is flourishing, much of it published by the Boydell Press which has produced a superb volume which is as pleasing to handle as it is absorbing to read. When complete, this monograph will be definitive. I eagerly await volume two.