The Middle English Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy (hereafter Wise Book) is a text that was widely copied and circulated between the years c. 1380–1600. The text can perhaps best be understood as part of the Secreta secretorum or ‘advice to princes’ tradition from which it almost certainly emerged or, at least, by which it was influenced; it is a short exposition on the influence of the planets and the zodiac on human behaviour and character, on destiny, on (in some cases) appearance and on everyday life and living, interspersed with which are instructions on how to measure time, a debate on providence and free will, and some notes on the hours of the day and the reigns of the planets. Its tenure as one of the most popular and widely read texts of its kind in medieval England cannot be understated, and since the Wise Book describes in simple terms potentially complex concepts regarding the workings of the universe and presents them accessibly and comprehensibly, it evidently suited fairly widespread dispersal and copying: it is preserved (in varying degrees of completeness) in thirty-four late-medieval and early modern manuscript witnesses. It is frequently co-located with a set of nativities. Because of its logical structure which moves from macrocosm to microcosm and which normally comprises a prologue; an enumeration of the heavens, planets signs and months, and zodiacal signs; a debate by two philosophers on predestination and free will; sections on the spheres and heavens, the elements and complexions; and a computus, the Wise Book was easily fragmented and disseminated in parts; therefore it lends itself to the practices of scribes, compilers and patrons who, when assembling and planning books and texts, were increasingly selective.

The manuscripts of the Wise Book certainly may have been more numerous contemporary with and in the years after its composition or, at least, its first circulation. The Wise Book, however, never had an early modern life in print, so perhaps the dispersal of its manuscripts cannot be compared to, say, a medieval text in manuscript that was printed in the early years of the new technology. In other words, the Wise Book may have relatively quickly come to occupy a particular space in the textual landscape of early modern England.