The fourteenth century sees a major shift in secular literary culture in England. In the reign of Edward I (1272–1307) French was the accepted medium of high literary expression. By the beginning of the fifteenth century English had largely displaced French as the language of composition in most literary genres. While the ‘rise of English’ has been examined from a number of perspectives, until recently less attention has been paid to exploring French culture in fourteenth-century England. This essay reviews a range of evidence relating to the availability, circulation and production of French texts in the middle decades of the fourteenth century. Focusing on the English royal court and the aristocracy in the age of Edward III, and on cultural relations between England and France in the first period of the Hundred Years' War, it complicates linear accounts of the decline of French by examining the flowering of French literary culture in England during this time. It uses the terms ‘Anglo-Norman’ and ‘Anglo-French’ to distinguish, loosely, between texts derived mainly from older insular tradition and texts that reveal an engagement with recent continental works. Focusing on the changing terms of political and cultural relations between England and France, it seeks to enrich an understanding of French literary culture in England between the 1340s and 1360s.