The author of a thirteenth-century chess treatise addresses the following instructions to the friend who has commissioned his translation:

No doubt the injunction not to lend the book to anyone was inspired by fear of its loss, but the argument about publication, i.e. ‘making public’, goes back to Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana and the hermetic tradition of the ‘books of secrets’ in scientific writing, which seek to guard against trivialization.

It is obvious enough that if we are to discover anything worthwhile about the production, circulation and patronage of vernacular books in the Middle Ages, a careful examination of the make-up of surviving volumes is indispensable. Although the study of the medieval book is well established, Anglo-Norman codicology has made somewhat halting progress so far, largely as a result of the reluctance of editors to give detailed and independent assessments of the manuscripts they are using. Admittedly, the date at which extant manuscripts, booklets and loose sheets were assembled and bound as composite volumes is often incalculable – there are a number of stages between the quire, the unbound pamphlet and the fully bound manuscrit de luxe.