The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature

This is an impressive volume offering “a collaborative account of literature composed or transmitted in the British Isles between 1066 and 1547”. There are five sections: “After the Norman conquest”, “Writing, in the British Isles”, “Institutional productions”, “After the Black Death”. and “Before the Reformation”. Each section is prefaced by a brief introduction outlining the central preoccupations of the essays which follow. Thirty‐three contributors from universities in the UK, the USA and Canada, write extensively on their fields of interest.

In the first section essays range from Seth Lerer on “Old English and its afterlife”; Susan Crane on “Anglo‐Norman cultures...