Recent Books

British Literature and Print Culture. Ed. by Sandro Jung. (Essays and Studies, 66.) Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer; The English Association. 2013. 221 pp. £30. isbn 978 1 84384 343 6.

This volume of Essays and Studies from the English Association is focussed on book historical subjects and offers examinations of bibliographical matters, publishing practices, the illustration of texts in a variety of engraved media, little studied print culture genres, the critical and editorial fortunes of individual works, and the significance of the complex interrelationships that authors entertained with booksellers, publishers, and designers. Includes: Laura L. Runge, ‘Tracing a Genealogy of Oroonoko Editions, 1688–2002’; Nathalie Collé-Bak, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress, Print Culture and the Dissenting Tradition’; J. A. Downie, ‘Printing for the Author in the Long Eighteenth Century’; Gerard Carruthers, ‘Robert Burns’s Interleaved Scots Musical Museum: A Case-Study in the Vagaries of Editors and Owners’; Sandro Jung, ‘Packaging, Design and Colour: From Fine-Printed to Small-Format Editions of Thomson’s The Seasons, 1793–1802’; Peter Garside, ‘Print Illustrations and the Cultural Materialism of Scott’s Waverley Novels’; Brian Maidment, ‘Beyond Usefulness and Ephemerality: The Discursive Almanac, 1828–60’; Marysa Demoor, ‘The Last Years of a Victorian Monument: The Athenaeum after Maccoll’.

Authority in European Book Culture 1400–1600. Ed. by Pollie Bromilow. Farnham: Ashgate. 2013. 232 pp. £55. isbn 978 1 4724 1010 8.

Papers from a conference held at the University of Liverpool in June 2006. Includes: Brian Richardson, ‘Manuscript, Print, Orality and the Authority of Texts in Renaissance Italy’; Adrian Armstrong, ‘Books on the Bridge: Writing, Printing and Viral Authority’; Helen Swift, ‘Competing Codes of Authority in mid-Fifteenth Century Burgundy: Martin le Franc and the Book that Answers Back’; Albert Schirrmeister, ‘Authority through Antiquity—Humanist Historiography and Regional Descriptions: The Cases of Erasmus Stella, Johannes Cuspinian and Robert Gaguin’; Samuel Willcocks, ‘Schiltberger’s Travels, 1396–1597’; Massimo Rospocher, ‘Print and Political Propaganda under Pope Julius II (1503–13’); Catherine Emerson, ‘Denis Sauvage—Renaissance Editor of Medieval Manuscripts’; Pollie Bromilow, ‘Fictions of Authority: Hélisenne de Crenne and the Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent d’amours (1538)’; Tracey A. Sowerby, ‘The Early Polemics of Henry VIII’s Royal Supremacy and their International Usage’; Jane Finucane, ‘Rebuking the Princes: Erasmus Alber in Magdeburg, 1548–52’; Robert Alexander Maryks, ‘Religious Authority and Publishing Success in the Early Modern Jesuit Penitential Book Printing’.

The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images and Communities in the Late Middle Ages. Ed. by Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse and Kathryn A. Smith (Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 21.) Turnhout: Brepols. 2013. xxiv + 552 pp. €120. isbn 978 2 503 53212 7.

A collection of essays from art history and literary scholars exploring the social interactions enabled by the interplay of images and texts in medieval manuscripts. Divided into two sections: Spiritual Community and Social and Political Community, with 135 illustrations and nine colour plates. Includes: Marlene Villalobos Hennessy, ‘The Social Life of a Manuscript Metaphor: Christ’s Blood as Ink’; Alixe Bovey, ‘Communion and Community: Eucharistic Narratives and their Audience in the Smitheld Decretals’; Lucy Freeman Sandler, ‘Worded and Wordless Images: Biblical Narratives in the Psalters of Humphrey de Bohun’; Kathryn A. Smith, ‘A “Viewing Community” in Fourteenth-Century England’; David Joseph Wrisley, ‘Jean Germain’s Debat du Crestien et du Sarrasin: Illumination Between Multi-Confessional Debate and Anti-Conciliarism’; Robert L. A. Clark and Pamela Sheingorn, ‘“Ces mots icy verrez juer”: Performative Presence and Social Life in the Arras Passion Manuscript’; Laura Weigert, ‘Anthoine Vérard’s Illuminated Playscript of La vengeance nostre seigneur: Marketing Plays and Creating the King’s Image’; Logan E. Whalen, ‘Visualizing Morality in the Manuscripts of Marie de France’s Isopet’; Nancy Freeman Regalado, ‘Angels on the Right Bank: The Celestial Ladder over Paris in BnF, MS fr. 146’; Anne D. Hedeman, ‘Performing Documents and Documenting Performance in the Procès de Robert d’Artois (BnF, MS fr. 18437) and Charles V’s Grandes chroniques de France (BnF, MS fr. 2813)’; Mark Cruse, ‘Pictorial Polyphony: Image, Voice, and Social Life in the Romand’Alexandre (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264)’; Joyce Coleman, ‘The First Presentation Miniature in an...