Publisher's Synopsis
The catalogue describes in detail one hundred and twelve medieval books and over two hundred fragments of medieval manuscripts now in the library of All Souls College. About seventy five of the books can be shown to have been there since the college's formation in 1438 or later in the fifteenth century, but apart from their interest as part of a historic collection they and the subsequently acquired manuscripts contain material that will interest art historians, liturgical scholars, students of Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, Anglo-Norman and Latin texts, historians of medicine and science, of civil, canon, and English law, musicologists, and historians of medieval education and culture. The ony existing catalogue is that of H.O. Coxe, published in 1842 and 1852, which although good for its time does not meet the needs of modern scholars who require detailed information about make-up, script, decoration, binding and provenance as well as precise identification of texts and reference to editions. The new catalogue meets these needs, by describing not only the books but the fragments as well.
