Fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century English bindings have never been of as much interest to binding scholars as have twelfth- and thirteenth-century English Romanesque stamped bindings or the stamped, tanned leather covers that were placed on books from 1450 forward. This is largely because, to quote Mirjam Foot, ‘in the first three quarters of the [twentieth] century, the history of bookbinding was virtually synonymous with the history of binding decoration’. Very few treasure or embroidered bindings from the Middle Ages survive, and stamped bindings (covers impressed with hot metal stamps or rules) are as ‘decorative’ as most medieval bindings get. Books of fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century England get short shrift because they are rarely stamped. They are often covered in plain, alum-tawed skin; and the only decorative flourishes they bear that might interest a student of ‘decoration’ appear on metal clasps, catch-plates and catch-pins, and the silk stitching of compound endbands which survive with even less frequency than old boards or covers. The prevailing view of late medieval English bookbinding is therefore still that of G. D. Hobson (in 1929): it ‘left hardly anything of any interest to the student of bindings’.

The purpose of this chapter is to offer an alternative view. The period 1350–1500 has a great deal to offer students of books who are interested in their covers as well as their contents. Even the paucity of evidence noted by Hobson deserves further thought. Consider, for example, the impact of sixteenth-century changes to library furnishings.