Makers and Users of Medieval Books. Essays in Honour of A.S.G. Edwards. Ed. Carol M. Meale and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2014).

A. S. G. Edwards has made great contributions to scholarship both through his own publications and through his work organising and participating in the creation of reference tools. The topics addressed in this collection honouring him reflect the breadth of his interests. The chapters are roughly grouped around different stages of books’ lives, from the composition of texts to the ownership and use of manuscripts and early printed books centuries after their production.
J. A. Burrow’s chapter opens the book by tracing the ideas of winning and wasting through Wynnere and Wastoure and Piers Plowman, and remarking on the two poems’ possible relationship. Alfred Hiatt examines John Whethamstede’s Granarium, a highlyorganised reference work which itself seems to defy classification. Hiatt indicates that this text demands further study, but nevertheless offers some interesting conclusions about its construction and its use of humanist learning. Martha W. Driver, meanwhile, explores the changing meanings of ‘pageant’, and the artistic and dramatic practices which the word might have invoked.