The Earliest Books of Canterbury Cathedral. Manuscripts and Fragments to c. 1200

Bibliographical Society, London, first edition, 2008. Cloth, 8vo,. 416 pp, 50 colour plates. From the blurb: "One of the greatest literary centres throughout the Middle Ages, Canterbury still preserves - despite horrendous losses - a significant collection of medieval manuscripts. In this book Professor Richard Gameson has described and discussed all Canterbury's pre-thirteenth-century manuscripts for the first time. Each manuscript is illustrated in colour, several with more than one image. Highlights range from the oldest copies of the Alfredian translation of Gregory the Great's Dialogues, and of Lanfranc's gloss on the Epistles, through fine liturgica, to an extraordinarily grand copy of Peter Comestor's Historia Scholartica. Lucid and very detailed descriptions are complemented by broad-ranging analyses that explain the significance of these works in general and of the Canterbury copies in particular. In a substantial introduction Professor Gameson traces the history of book-production in Kent and Canterbury up to c. 1200, follows the development and use of the Canterbury collections in the later Middle Ages, and discusses the fate of these books at the Reformation. Fine in Near Fine dustwrapper.