This two-volume publication examines commercial book production in Paris, covering the years 1200 to 1500 - from the time when reliable documentary evidence of the trade first became available until the advent of print.

This two-volume publication examines in depth the organization, craftsmen, clients and products of the commercial book trade in Paris from 1200 to 1500, a time when the city was the uncontested centre of commercial manuscript production in Northern Europe. The first volume deals with the establishment of the Paris book trade, how it functioned and how it changed, always as a closeknit community of families whose lives are reconstructed from archives and from the manuscripts they produced. These chapters are documented with maps, diagrams, genealogies and illustrations of the manuscripts involved. The second volume contains a register of some 1200 short biographies of members of the medieval book trade in Paris, including scribes and illuminators such as Master Honoré and Jean Pucelle. This important study, based on the series of Lyell Lectures in Bibliography recently given at the University of Oxford, makes a significant contribution to the history of art, the history of French Literature, the history of the book and the history of medieval Paris.