Writing and Texts in Anglo-Saxon England

Approaches to the use of writing in Anglo-Saxon England - as depicted in manuscripts, textiles, stones and metalwork.

Palaeography is crucial for an understanding of Anglo-Saxon history, literature, and archaeology, while the development of Anglo-Saxon literacy has much significance as a cultural indicator. The papers in this book offer an original and multidisciplinary approach to the study of the introduction and use of writing in the Latin alphabet in Anglo-Saxon England. They consider the variety of contexts in which letter-forms were executed and texts were copied inEngland between the seventh and eleventh centuries: in books, documents, textiles, stones, and metalwork. Several of the papers shed new light on well-known manuscripts, scribes, artefacts or texts by approaching them from a different angle, others survey bibliographical and cultural aspects of the surviving corpus of writing from this period, while not least among the discoveries made is the identification and publication of a new piece of Old English verse.

Dr ALEXANDER R. RUMBLE is Reader in Palaeography at the University of Manchester.

Contributors: ALEXANDER R. RUMBLE, RICHARD EMMS, JANE ROBERTS, CATHERINE E. KARKOV, ELISABETH OKASHA, ELIZABETH COATSWORTH, PHILIP SHAW, CAROLE HOUGH, TIMOFEY GUIMON