Sixteenth-Century Readers, Fifteenth-Century Books: Continuities of Reading in the English Reformation

✍ Scribed by Margaret Connolly

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 333
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology 16
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This innovative study investigates the reception of medieval manuscripts over a long century, 1470–1585, spanning the reigns of Edward IV to Elizabeth I. Members of the Tudor gentry family who owned these manuscripts had properties in Willesden and professional affiliations in London. These men marked the leaves of their books with signs of use, allowing their engagement with the texts contained there to be reconstructed. Through detailed research, Margaret Connolly reveals the various uses of these old books: as a repository for family records; as a place to preserve other texts of a favourite or important nature; as a source of practical information for the household; and as a professional manual for the practising lawyer. Investigation of these family-owned books reveals an unexpectedly strong interest in works of the past, and the continuing intellectual and domestic importance of medieval manuscripts in an age of print.

✦ Table of Contents

Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Note on Transcription Policy
Introduction
1 Family Matters: The Roberts Family of Willesden
2 Private Faces in Public Places
3 Devotional Reading in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII
4 Out of the Cloister, Out of the Family
5 Books and Their Uses
6 Devotional Reading in the Reigns of Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I
Conclusion: Newly Reformed Readers?
Postscript: After the Family: The Manuscripts’ Later Histories
Appendices
Appendix I: Timeline of Key Events during the Lifetimes of Thomas and Edmund Roberts
Appendix II: Summary List of Contents of the Manuscripts Owned by the Roberts Family
Appendix III: Manuscripts and Printed Books of Uncertain Association
Appendix IV: Other Families Named Roberts
Bibliography
Index of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books
General Index