This volume had its origins in a paper I gave at a conference held at the University of Oxford in April 2009. ‘After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England’ was organised by a committee which included Vincent Gillespie, and it resulted in a volume of essays of the same name, edited by Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh, published by Brepols in 2011. At the conference I was approached by Caroline Palmer, Editorial Director at Boydell & Brewer Ltd, who suggested a ‘Companion’ to the early printed book, the history of which I had sketched in my paper. This book is the result.

The material culture of the book trade has burgeoned as an area of diverse as well as specific research over the last twenty-five years. Arguably this began at the University of York in the 1970s with the scholarship of Derek Pearsall and the late Elizabeth Salter, whose postgraduate students, several now distinguished scholars themselves (two represented in this volume), explored significant new areas in manuscript production and culture. 1981 marked the first of the continuing York Manuscript Conferences, ‘Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England’. The link to the printed book was inevitable and was explored in sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies held annually at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. Organised by Martha Driver and the late Sarah Horrall, the Early Book Society (several of whose members are represented in this volume) emerged from these sessions in 1987 and held the first of its biennial conferences at the University of Durham in 1989.