WHEN THE MEDIEVAL Academy of America met in Boston in 2016, Bob Bjork from Arizona State's Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies said that Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, which they had published for some years, was in need of a new editor. Independently, Paul Szarmach and Joel Rosenthal indicated an interest in taking this on. Then they discovered their mutual interest and, since they were old friends who had co-edited a number of projects and as a team had run an international conference, they offered to be joint or co-editors. This was an easy pairing, as Paul's special interest was Old English literature and he also had a broad knowledge, from a career of editing and administering, of a vast range of medieval topics. And Joel, though primarily a social historian of the later Middle Ages, had also worked a bit on Anglo-Saxon and early medieval history.

Together they co-edited four volumes of the series (Volume 16 is forthcoming). But before they could really turn to Volume 17, which would have been their last, Paul died. This made a memorial volume of the series, both a professional and a serious personal obligation. As Joel needed a co-editor—especially since he wanted to solicit contributions from Paul's primary area of expertise—he turned to Virginia Blanton. She is Curators’ Distinguished Professor in the Department of English, University of Missouri, Kansas City. Paul had been her doctoral supervisor at SUNY Binghamton. She and Helene Scheck had co-edited (Inter)Texts: Studies in Early Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Paul E. Szarmach, and she knew both Paul's field of concentration and many of the scholars with whom he had had so much contact and influence.

Our invitation to publish this volume with memorial tributes to Paul Szarmach from colleagues, students, and old friends met with so much interest, it became necessary to divide the essays into two volumes. Vol. 17 includes several essays that had been submitted and accepted while Paul still was able to read and approve them, as well as five others in his memory. Vol. 18, which will conclude Joel's stint as editor of SMRH, will fittingly close the chapter on his long-time collaboration with Paul.