Orderic Vitalis, the monk of St. Évroul, author of the Gesta Normanorum and Historia Ecclesiastica, is well-known to medieval scholars. It is astounding, therefore, to learn that Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations is the first volume of essays dedicated solely to his life and work (14). As such, this volume of seventeen articles and two appendices fills a critical gap in the scholarship. The quality of the contributions, moreover, is consistently high and each offers new insights into one of the most important sources for scholars of the Middle Ages. The editors framed the essays to explore the interplay between Orderic as person and historian. To that end, the essays are divided into five groups or topics: Orderic's life, his use of evidence in his writing of history, his engagement with monastic life, how his work was received in his own time as well as in the late Middle Ages, and two appendices that provide useful reference material on Orderic's manuscripts and the physical remains of the monastery where he spent most of his life.

The first five essays examine Orderic's life and range in topics as diverse as his relationship with his father to his handwriting. In this section we learn the personal details of Orderic's early life—such as more information about his family life as so well developed by Elisabeth van Houts—but also his wider impact both within his monastery and without. Through careful analysis of his writing, Jenny Weston is able to identify a new manuscript written by Orderic and adds another manuscript to his corpus. Charles C. Rozier contributes important dimensions to Orderic's life by placing him within the context of his monastery. He argues that in addition to being the historian of his house, Orderic was also a librarian and cantor at St. Évroul and that holding these offices shaped how Orderic both wrote and approached history. This essay is complimented by Daniel Roach's essay that traces Orderic's connections outside of his own monastery with St. Évroul's houses in southern Italy through patronage by Norman families and the exchange of objects and prayers between the monastic communities. The fifth essay, by Mark Faulkner, evaluates Orderic's relationship with his birthplace of England, in order to determine his “Englishness,” by considering Orderic's command of English in his writings.

The next five essays take up Orderic's historical writing. Here the essays also range from the technical to placing Orderic and his work in a broader cultural and intellectual setting. Vincent Debiais and Estelle Ingrand-Varenne argue that Orderic's use of epigraphic works indicates that his historical writing bridged the gap between history and poetry. The interplay between Orderic's histories and the corpus of charters of St. Évroul is brought to light in Thomas Roche's very fine essay “Reading Orderic with Charters in Mind.” The next two contributions consider Orderic within the broader context of medieval cultural currents. Véronique Gazeau analyzes Orderic's relationship with three particular saints' cults, as well as Orderic's sporadic integration of saints' lives into his histories. Moving from the sacred to the profane, William M. Aird examines Orderic's view of contemporary political leaders. Rounding out the section is Emily Albu's discussion of Orderic's “tone” in writing history, which she argues was shaped by the violence and instability of his time.

Orderic Vitalis as monk and theologian is often over-shadowed by his role as recorder of the events of his time. Collectively, the essays by Giles E. M. Gasper, Elisabeth Mégier, Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn, and Thomas O'Donnell address this imbalance and examine Orderic's works—as well as his experience as a monk—within the theological discourses of his day. During his lifetime, Orderic witnessed a profound blossoming of monastic life, evident in the establishment of several new orders of monks. Kathleen Thompson's contribution to the volume places Orderic in dialogue with one of those orders: the monks of the abbey of Tiron.

The final two essays in the volume consider how Orderic and his works were received in his own time and in the later medieval centuries. Benjamin Pohl interprets Orderic's work through the fascinating lens of cultural memory. He examines how the writing of books served to preserve memory but also as a means to save souls. James G. Clark shows how late medieval interest in the origins of the monastery of St. Évroul meant that Orderic's writings were preserved and read throughout the Middle Ages. The collection concludes with two reference works for the life and contributions of Orderic Vitalis: a summary by Annie-Sophie Vigot of the recent archeological excavations at Orderic's monastery of St. Évroul and a catalogue of all manuscripts in the hand of Orderic complied by Jenny Weston and Charles C. Rozier. The information contained here will be invaluable to Anglo-Norman scholars.

This collection of essays is a significant contribution to the scholarship on Orderic Vitalis and the Anglo-Norman realm. The volume situates Orderic in his intellectual, religious, monastic, and even family context. In short, it offers a comprehensive study of one of the most important observers of the central Middle Ages. This collection will undoubtedly be a necessary reference for all interested in the writings of Orderic in particular but also his era in general. The essays are of a uniformly high quality, written by both established specialists in the field and promising early career scholars. Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations offers the most up-to-date and innovative research on one of the medieval past's most intriguing authors and personalities. The one minor deficit is that the volume would have been improved if there had been a map provided of Orderic's world so that the information in the essays could be more accessible to those not well-versed in Anglo-Norman geography. But this is a minor flaw. This volume is a commendable collection of scholarship.