The Anglo-Saxon Library

Lapidge, Michael

ISBN 10: 0199267227 / ISBN 13: 9780199267224

Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006

About this Item

Xiv, 407 pp. Bibliography, index of manuscripts, general index. Dark red glossy dust jacket is clean, minor shelf wear. Book itself has old owner inscript marked out on first blank, otherwise clean and fresh, tight, a very nice copy. Includes inventories of Latin books from Anglo-Saxon libraries, 8th century inventories of Latin books from the area of the Anglo-Saxon Mission in Germany, 9th century manuscripts having pre-conquest English provenance, Latin books cited by principal Anglo-Saxon authors, and a catalogue of classical and patristic authors and works composed before AD 700 and known in Anglo-Saxon England. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 422 pages.

Seller Inventory # 9955

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Anglo-Saxon Library
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199267227
• ISBN 13: 9780199267224
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Medieval Studies
  • Language-Old/Early English
  • Bibliography

About this title

Synopsis

The cardinal role of Anglo-Saxon libraries in the transmission of classical and patristic literature to the later middle ages has long been recognized, for these libraries sustained the researches of those English scholars whose writings determined the curriculum of medieval schools: Aldhelm, Bede, and Alcuin, to name only the best known. Yet this is the first full-length account of the nature and holdings of Anglo-Saxon libraries from the sixth century to the eleventh.

The early chapters discuss libraries in antiquity, notably at Alexandria and republican and imperial Rome, and also the Christian libraries of late antiquity which supplied books to Anglo-Saxon England. Because Anglo-Saxon libraries themselves have almost completely vanished, three classes of evidence need to be combined in order to form a detailed impression of their holdings: surviving inventories, surviving manuscripts, and citations of classical and patristic works by Anglo-Saxon authors themselves.

After setting out the problems entailed in using such evidence, the book is provided with appendices containing editions of all surviving Anglo-Saxon inventories, lists of all Anglo-Saxon manuscripts exported to continental libraries during the eighth century and then all manuscripts re-imported into England in the tenth, as well as a catalogue of all citations of classical and patristic literature by Anglo-Saxon authors.

A comprehensive index, arranged alphabetically by author, combines these various classes of evidence so that the reader can see at a glance what books were known where and by whom in Anglo-Saxon England. The book thus provides, within a single volume, a vast amount of information on the books and learning of the schools which determined the course of medieval literary culture.

About the Author

Michael Lapidge was Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge (1991-8) and Notre Dame Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame (1999-2004); he is now Fellow Emeritus of Clare College, Cambridge. He has published widely on the literature of the Anglo-Saxons (both Old English and Latin). His most recent book was The Cult of St Swithun (OUP, 2003). He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and Corresponding Fellow of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften and of the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome).