Product Description: The Celtic, Pictish, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking peoples who inhabited the British Isles and Ireland from late prehistory to the Normal Conquest left behind a rich visual heritage that continues to be felt today. The traditions of each of these peoples has been studied separately, but rarely has the historical interaction of these cultures been adequately considered...read more

Product Description: Between 550 and 1050 AD, the world of late Roman Antiquity was utterly transformed, becoming a patchwork region of independent states that eventually coalesced into empires and nations, each with distinct, emerging identities. In The Book and the Transformation of Britain, esteemed medievalist Michelle P...read more

Product Description: Ranging from the earliest Christians up to present day, this expansive study provides a complete history of Christian art as it appeared in the West as well as parts of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia...read more

Tells the Biblical story, focusing upon the Creation to the Flood, the Life of Christ, and the Apocalypse, with the help of illustrations of everyday 14th-century England. This picture-book is based on the biblical narrative and also includes plenty of apocryphal episodes, for example Christ surfing on sunbeams as a child.

Product Description: The Anglo-Saxons first appeared on the historical scene as Germanic pagan pirates and mercenaries, moving into the declining Roman Empire in the 5th Century AD and forging a series of kingdoms which became 'England'. By the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, Anglo-Saxon England was one of the most sophisticated states in the medieval West, renowned for its ecclesiastical and cultural achievements...read more

Setting the Luttrell Psalter within its medieval society and culture, this work traces its history, inspiration and creation, highlighting its artistic models, originality and innovation. Exploring its patronage, purpose and audience, it unravels the likely point and meaning of the Luttrell's imagery and domestic drama.

A companion volume to a major exhibition assembles seventy of the world's most significant biblical codices, reproducing in lavish detail an assemblage of rare scriptural copies, papyrus scraps, and vellum artifacts, complemented by authoritarian essays on the Bible's thousand-year transformation into a complex symbol of faith.

Tells the story of how Christianity came to the British Isles. This work explores what Britain and Ireland were like in prehistoric times and the impact of the Roman world. It also examines the crucial Anglo Saxon period from 600 to 1000, including: Pope Gregory's missions to Kent and Northumbria; the northern saints from Iona; and more.

Product Description: This book arose out of a challenge. The challenge was made by Bob Geldof to the British academic and historian Michelle Brown. Pop singers raise huge sums of money for Band Aid and touch the hearts of people from all walks of life...read more

Product Description: Published to coincide with a British Library exhibition of the same name, Painted Labyrinth: The World of the Lindisfarne Gospels looks at the background and history of this breathtaking artwork and symbol of Christian faith. Both illustrated and readable, the book is divided into short sections, each examining an aspect of the Anglo-Saxon world, the heritage of the people who lived and ruled at this time, and how and why this great book was created...read more

Product Description: The eighth-century Latin Gospelbook known as the Lindisfarne Gospels, with its tenth-century gloss (the earliest surviving translation of the Gospels into the English language), is one of the great landmarks of human cultural achievement...read more

Product Description: This CD-ROM enables the user to view the pages of "The Sherborne Missal" - one of the British Library's greatest treasures. The Sherborne Missal was produced around 1400 CE for Sherborne Abbey in Dorset. Unusually for a manuscript of the period, it includes a -large number of British birds in the decorative borders...read more

Product Description: A collection of 21 specially commissioned papers which aims to provide an interdisciplinary study of the origins of Mercia, its culture and its relationship to the Church and other kingdoms, in the British Isles and on the Continent...read more

Fourteen historical manuscripts, supported by other manuscript examples, are used to explore fifteen selected writing styles. Dr Michelle P. Brown analyses the production of the manuscripts, setting them in their historical context and relating them to the people who produced them. Patricia Lovett uses the manuscripts to analyse the letter-forms in detail, and then gives clear guidance on how to write the letters. Each section includes a calligraphic interpretation of the historic letter-form.This book is the first to put the needs of the historian and the scribe at the forefront. Large-scale examples of the manuscripts are included for letter analysis, with, in most instances, a full page colour reproduction of a page from the same manuscript alongside. Other selected manuscripts with clear letter-forms show the development of that alphabet style throughout the periods under consideration. A whole page is devoted to exemplar letters of each alphabet style, with clear guidelines on how the letters are formed, including punctuation marks, an ampersand (or et ligature) and numerals. Each section includes a specially created piece of modern calligraphy, showing how the hand can be used today.

(view table of contents)

Product Description: Illuminating the Book: Makers and Interpreters is published in honour of Janet Backhouse, Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at The British Library, who retired in 1998 after a 35-year career at the British Museum and Library. Many eminent scholars and colleagues have contributed essays reflecting Janet's own research interests, particularly in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, and in the interaction between English collectors and continental book producers...read more

Product Description: The Book of Cerne (Cambridge University library, MSLLL10) reveals a complex interplay of text, script, and image. It offers a fascinating insight into Insular culture and is the only surviving illuminated manuscript that can be firmly attributed to the powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia...read more

A survey of the evolution of scripts and a guide to reading historical documents illustrated from a wide range of manuscripts. Fifty-five full-page plates give examples of the major western scripts in broadly chronological sequence, each accompanied by a commentary indentifying the type of script, its historical and regional currency, distinctive features and style, and a transcription. Michelle Brown is a curator in the department of manuscripts at The British Library. She has taught courses in Paleography and History at the University of London and at the Library.

Product Description: This selection of thirteen papers from the published and unpublished work of the late Professor Julian Brown is brought together as a tribute to one of the great palaeographers of his time. The book provides penetrating insights into the study of script, parchment, and illuminations, as well as into the wider contents of early history and art, and reveals the many facets of Brown's influence on recent palaeography...read more

Product Description: The book was a central element of Anglo-Saxon art and society and a rich vehicle for cultural expression. In this study of the art of bookmaking throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, the author discusses the works and their readers, the scribes' materials and techniques, script and illumination...read more