The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Volume 1: c.400‐1100

“When the Vindolanda tablets, dating from between AD 90 and 120, were discovered on Hadrian's Wall in the 1970s, they changed dramatically our understanding of the place of Roman Britain in the literate world of the Roman Empire” (p. 313). On a visit I made to Vindolanda's museum recently, the excitement of visitors viewing these scraps of writing was palpable. For me, these mundane and utilitarian “documents” retrieved from a bog in Northumbria, had as much resonance as the more ornately decorated manuscript treasures we admire in library showcases elsewhere.

This book is the first, chronologically speaking, and the penultimate...