![]() ![]() Each book explores a different aspect of medieval life through its depiction in manuscript illuminations. Their growing series, Medieval Manuscripts (formerly The Medieval World in Manuscripts), is perhaps their most well-known venture of this sort. Whether intentionally or not, this parallels a movement common to all British museums to make the cultural wealth of the country accessible to all and to dispell the widespread notion- nowhere, perhaps more entrenched than with respect to illuminated manuscripts- of art as the elitist preserve of the wealthy and cultured. In recent years, however, the British Library has also taken considerable advantage of their manuscript collections, and of their copyrighted photographs of them, to produce a wide range of affordable illustrated books aimed at a broader market. She has also written a more substantial "introduction" to books of hours under the title of Books of Hours (British Library, 1985). Janet Backhouse has produced several of these, ranging from The Lindisfarne Gospels (1995) to The Isabella Breviary (1993), and apropos of this book, also including The Bedford Hours (1990), The Hastings Hours (1996) and The Sforza Hours (1992). Another excellent series is their well illustrated, compact and affordable scholarly introductions to individual manuscripts. Its series, The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture, publishes solid and wide-ranging monographic studies of various aspects of medieval manuscript illumination. The British Library has, indeed, published and continues to publish exemplary works of scholarship on its manuscripts. Her very short introduction to the volume introduces books of hours, their illumination, the collections of of illuminated manuscripts in the British Library, and the role of books of hours in the history of collecting and connoisseurship-all in a compact 8 1/2 pages! The rest of the book consists of full-page colour photographs of a remarkable variety of folios from books of hours in the British Library's unsurpassed collection of illuminated manuscripts.Īlthough the publisher touts this book as "an introduction to some of the most beautiful and historically interesting manuscripts in the collections of the British Library," the question is: an "introduction" to whom? The most satisfactory answer to this is "the general public," and I would not wish to denigrate the British Library's efforts to target this audience in its splendid publishing programme. Rather, Janet Backhouse has used her unparalleled knowledge of the British Library's manuscripts to select images for what is essentially a picture book. ![]() It should be stated at the outset, however, that this book is not intended as a contribution to scholarship. Undoubtedly the reason that The Medieval Review wanted this book reviewed was the same as my reason for accepting to review it, sight unseen: the name of its author, Janet Backhouse, a former Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library, who has written widely and perceptively on medieval manuscript illumination.
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