INTENTION

The general scope of this work is to give an overview of the variety of scripts used in the recording of English literature up to and a little beyond the introduction of print, a period too often broken up into Old English (or English up to and a little beyond the Norman Conquest of 1066) and Middle English (roughly from the Norman Conquest up to 1400 or to 1525 or to some later date, according to the historical stance adopted). Further subdivisions refine on these period terms, for example early Middle English (or Middle English up to c. 1360), but such terms depend on assumptions made about the history of the English language and its literature, and the divisions indicated are often without particular relevance to the history of script. This book is for readers who want to explore how English was set down in writing before print became general. Its aim is to help readers to identify the sets of letter-forms in use and to understand their place in the history of script. The aim is two-fold because the reading of scripts is helped by understanding changes and developments in the choice of letter-forms from one period to another. The range of samples is taken for the most part from well-known manuscripts. Although illustrations from and facsimiles of these are nowadays far more available than formerly, they are often expensive and rarely widely accessible. I hope that readers will be eager to look for facsimile volumes and recent microfiche, CD-ROM, and web publications (including manuscript descriptions for many major libraries) and that this book will make it easier for them to find and to use such resources efficiently. I have set my eyes on virtually all the manuscripts from which reproductions are taken (not Ellesmere, or the Tanner Bede, which is undergoing rebinding at present), though some very fleetingly in exhibition cases (Lindisfarne Gospels, the Stockholm Codex Aureus).

Throughout the centuries covered by this book, the writing of English was, by comparison with the writing of Latin, a minority activity. The Norman Conquest brought huge administrative changes to England and incidentally paved the way for the reception of a second vernacular language, French, in which a great quantity of fashionable Anglo-Norman literature was to be written, but it had little immediate effect on the appearance of books.