The Dutch book trade provided the major channel through which English books were distributed on the Continent in the early eighteenth century. In the second half of the century, the Dutch trade retained its leading position, but it appears to have gradually lost its key function as distributor of English books to the Continent. In the total corpus of continental translations, literary works constituted the central element. The literature of travel and geographical exploration was of great interest on the Continent not only were the reports of James Cook and other individual works translated, but large new collections of travel accounts were also compiled. In some fields such as classical and oriental studies, the intellectual exchanges between England and scholarly centres on the Continent were particularly intense. Many details of this traffic in ideas across the Channel are also of interest to the book historian.

This chapter provides the understanding of England and the Continent in the eighth and ninth centuries. It concentrations of the evidence, the context for and activities of the Anglo-Saxon missionaries on the Continent, the establishment of new religious foundations in Hesse, Thuringia and Franconia, the Anglo-Saxons' contributions to the Frankish church, their interaction with Frankish rulers and bishops, and their legacy for subsequent connections across the Channel in the ninth century and afterwards. The eighth century in England and Francia was a period of rapid political change. It saw the emergence in England of Mercia, and in Francia of the Carolingian family whose wealth and interests were focused in the Rhine, Moselle and Meuse region, that is, the region where the English missionaries were initially most active. Information about the early life of the first of these missionaries, Willibrord, is meagre. The eighth- and ninth-century relations between England and the Continent were personal connections and local influences that were predominant.