Before the proliferation of mechanical printing in 15th-century Europe, there were few means for disseminating the stuff of endemic culture. Folklore, preaching, and ecclesiastical art each reached largely illiterate populations in their own ways.

But among the lettered elites, “manuscript” texts, painstakingly duplicated by hand, were another medium of transmission, though effectively a monopoly dominated by religious and, to a lesser extent, political oligarchies. In The Gilded Page: The Secret Lives of Medieval Manuscripts, Mary Wellesley, focusing mainly on English and Northern European exemplars, highlights many of the hallmarks characterizing the intriguing realm of manuscripts.

Wellesley’s approach is at once erudite and evocative and studded with compelling revelations ranging from the everyday mechanics of the copyist’s materials, tools, and techniques to the eye-popping artistry of the leading illuminators who decorated the texts that have come down to us. These gifted miniaturists habitually filled every available space on a chosen page with brilliant, jewel-bright illustrations that call on the visual vocabulary of contemporary life in the castle, monastery, and village.

Although most of these artists were apparently male monks, there were also copyists and illuminators in service to royalty and nobility, and even a number of women. One such, an anonymous 11th-century female illuminator (illuminatrix?), was identified posthumously by a dogged historical pathologist who found telltale priceless chemicals in her dental plaque. The researcher posited that the long-dead artist had sucked absentmindedly on the tail end of her brush as she worked.

Given the demographics of today’s reading audience, it’s not surprising that Wellesley keeps an eye peeled for the manuscript tradition’s most gifted woman copyists, artists, and even the authors whose efforts have survived. A handful stand out in her saga.

It’s worth noting that we’ve recently met one of these singularly talented women in the Independent already: Marie de France, portrayed fictionally by Lauren Groff in Matrix. In her extended discussion of the historical Marie — nun, poetess, and fabulist — Wellesley reveals how Marie boldly asserted her place as author (“I am from France, my name’s Marie”) in one text and suggests that male copyists were not above blotting out hints of female authorship, as women were often thought incapable of such intellectual exertions. Marie’s self-assertion has clearly survived.

Other women resorted to similar paleographic subterfuge. An English copyist by the name of Hugeburc (circa 780 A.D.) squeezed a cleverly encrypted self-identification into the scant space between two texts. It was not decoded until 1931. She might have dumbed it down a bit, perhaps.

The women authors whose works survive in manuscript form come in all types, from 14th-century devotional mystic Julian of Norwich to the late-15th-century Welsh poet Gwerful Mechain, whose output ranged in theme from the religious and devotional to the worldly and sexual. Mechain’s best known work is “Ode to the Vagina,” whose English title tends to vary from translator to translator, admitting a few less bowdlerized alternatives from the daring among them.

In general, copyists and artists seem to have worked collectively, their efforts often extending for years on a given text. For example, the mid-12th-century Winchester Bible (so named because of its cathedral of origin) seems to have occupied its team of illustrators for 15 years and more.

In her selection of color plates, Wellesley includes two lustrous examples of the Winchester illuminators’ work, along with many other breathtakingly luminous samples from keystone monastic and secular manuscripts spanning seven centuries. These examples serve to underscore the expert, encyclopedic commentary the author provides.

Wellesley’s volume is both scholarly and engaging for the non-expert. And it reminds us how many of the most cherished works in our mother tongue’s literary culture — including the whole of Old English written history and six centuries of poetry (e.g., Beowulf and the works of Geoffrey Chaucer) — have reached us largely by happenstance, via manuscripts that have survived fires and errant copyists intent on putting their own imprint on the texts.

We can only speculate about the works of high artistry and historical interest that have not come down to us across the ages.

The Gilded Page is an exhaustive and illuminating view into the work and mind of a Medievalist as well as the history of Medieval manuscripts. A subject typically shrouded in mystery due to academic gatekeeping, artifact protection, and many other reasons; Wellesley finally simplifies and modernizes the concepts of illumination and manuscript work for the typical layman. A beautiful and truly amazing book.

Thank you Netgalley and Perseus Books for access to this arc.

Vegans will want to skip the early section wherein Wellesley discusses how parchment was and (in only one business in England) still is still made. It sounds like something you’d have to get used to but in the end, it produced something that once made into a book has (in one case) survived for over 1700 years. Manuscripts that have managed to survive everything that can be thrown at them (fire, Vikings, being used as a drink coaster, candle wax, war, the Reformation, more fire, etc) are cherished and treasured today – usually being carefully kept in storage conditions that in many cases mean that they are as gorgeous as when they were first made. Her focus is on manuscripts from England though she says England lost far more manuscripts than did European countries.

Wellesley details the laborious process that went into the writing, the illustrations, and the binding. She mentions some little side notes that scribes managed to jot in the margins that mention their aching backs and cold fingers. She talks about some of the best known examples (Winchester Bible, Exeter Book, Luttrell Psalter), then some of the patrons who commissioned books (Queen Emma, twice Queen of England who lived in, shall we say, interesting times and King Henry VIII – both of whom were making a statement with what they chose to have made), and how illustrations were done. There’s also an interesting section about the letters that were written by and for various members of a family in the 15th century and what we can learn about them, the times, and class differences. The final chapter focuses on women, discussing (at too great a length) anchorites and a Welsh female poet Gwerfud Mechain who composed what could be viewed as unashamed feminist poems (“Ode to the Vagina”).

I enjoyed reading about how certain manuscripts made it through the ages despite upheavals all around them but at the same time, the paucity of the survivors makes me sad for what has been lost. Yet there still might be undiscovered treasures such as the one discovered when the head of a family was rustling through a cabinet searching for ping pong balls leading to the discovery of the autobiography of Margery Kempe. Excerpts in Old English, Middle English, and Latin are included along with modern English translations. Have fun and try your hand at deciphering them. Wellesley also pops her opinions and suppositions about some things into the book. Sometimes this was interesting but at other times she seemed to be reaching for actualities that might not be there.

But one thing that I didn’t see, besides the cover, were any illustrations. Perhaps there will be examples of the illuminated capitals of the Winchester Bible or the fun and whimsical illustrations from the Luttrell Psalter in the final copies but alas there are none in the ARC I read. Wellesley knows her stuff and I found her to be an interesting guide. B

Thank you to NetGalley and Basic Books for the chance to read an early copy of this book!

THE GILDED PAGE is an interesting history book, chock full of details and fascinating historical figures (including surprisingly powerful women!). While it has an academic bent, the prose is still pretty accessible to the lay reader. I particularly loved that the author chose to include the original language of quotations as well as modern English translations--sometimes you can figure it out but things like Beowulf are pretty impenetrable, and you see how much English has evolved throughout history. The one drawback with this book, and it's a big one, is that it could really use pictures and illustrations, not just prose, to give you a sense of the size, condition, and legibility (or lack thereof) of the books she's referencing. There's information that will engage the attention of any history buff, bibliophile, or word lover, but it feels almost incomplete, like you have to go look up all the digital images to really understand.

It’s hard for me to put into words how much I loved reading this one. That really is all you need to know about it right there. Part history, part love letter to books, The Gilded Page really has everything I’ve ever wanted to read right here in one very neat, very well formatted, very well written package.

Wellesley takes readers on a journey through history, exploring some remarkable manuscripts and what various clues left in them says about the authors of said historical gems. Detailing how the manuscript is discovered is only half the fun, but she takes a microscopic look at the clues left in the manuscript, echoes of history, and explains what they say about not just those who wrote it, but the time period itself.

These details are often tantalizing in the extreme, telling readers just enough, without ever going overboard on weighty infodumps loaded with scholarly jargon. The Gilded Page never stops being a passionate book about books. Replete with valuable information, I never felt like I was being hit over the head with important facts, but rather led by the author through a twisting, turning maze of history and discovery, and insights provided by the clues left behind. In a strange way, reading this book made me feel like I was part of the process of discovery, and that made everything I learned feel that much more personal.

Perhaps what surprised me the most about The Gilded Page was how accessible it was. I’ve tried to read books about medieval manuscripts before, but I often get weighed down by jargon, by things I feel like I should understand before going into the book. I’ve had a really hard time trying to find an entry-level nonfiction book that is both interesting and not held back by all the things I should already know.

I was almost surprised, in fact, by how accessible Wellesley kept this book. Discussing history through a lens of both discovery and insinuation based on clues, and information scholars already have, The Gilded Page took me by the hand and led me through the winding corridor of knowledge that I have previously found too burdened by meaning for my blood, and helped me understand what I was reading. Wellesley gave me information that is applicable, in a way that made it matter. This book gave me a fantastic overview of medieval manuscripts without making me feel like I should have at least taken on university level course first.

It’s not just the books she picks apart that kept me rooted in place, but how she used them as a jumping off point to often explore the world they came from, the time period, the people, and things that might have happened to the books along the way to the modern era. Editing is touched on, and how later editors perhaps modified the original author’s intent. Why some books were preserved and others weren’t. Who wrote the book, who sold it, why it was both written and sold is often as interesting as the manuscript itself.

There is a lot of information we just don’t know about this time period, and some of what I learned was surprising. For example, how many women were involved in the manuscripts discussed here was unexpected. I also was surprised by many of the details about the art itself, from the tools used, the inks, the papers, and the like. Again, part of the reason why this was so impactful to me was because it was written in a way I understood, by an author who knew how to not just lecture about a topic but connect with her reader.

Some of the books Wellesley covers are well known, and some less so. Instead of focusing solely on the books themselves, she takes a wider approach to all of them, and manages to show how time and place possibly influenced content. How tools of the trade changed over the years, and then tells stories of the things that likely happened around the manuscript that impacted how it was lost/found/damaged/disappeared/etc.

Wellesley keeps her voice and passion throughout and peppers the book with interesting and often humorous stories. From Henry VIII scribbling in the margins of a psalter, to medieval poets writing odes to genitalia, The Gilded Page keeps a certain remarkable wit about it which is balanced perfectly on the edge of the author’s obvious passion.

In the end, The Gilded Page was a book that was nearly impossible to put down. I read it in a few days, and then spent a few more days doing research to learn more about any number of the things I read about. Still, I find myself sitting here thinking, “Maybe I should re-read that book…”. It’s history the way it was meant to be written, engaging, fascinating, and informative, this book is one of those unforgettable marriages of passion and knowledge that sucked me in and refused to let me go.

5/5 stars

I really struggled to get through this. The information it contains is interesting, and there's a lot of great anecdotes included in here. I learned a lot. However, I constantly felt like I was making myself pick the book up and I think that mainly comes down to the narrative style. In terms of actual word choice the author's style and tone is casual and conversational, perfect for a book aimed at the general public. However, the book as a whole comes across as very academic in style. There's no narrative through line making the book feel very piecemeal. There's also a lot of repetition in a way that is wearying without adding a sense of connection between the parts. If you're interested in the topic, give this book a try, but I did not find it a quick read.

As Mary Wellesley writes, manuscripts are hand-written objects - artefacts and cultural landmarks, each teaching with history. The scripts, materials and bindings themselves tell stories and this book includes many of them. The sheer length of time they took to create was incredible. As a sampler embroiderer, stitching one letter can take ages so entire documents? Wow.

Though my e-copy of this book sadly does not contain illustrations, I have seen many on my travels and they are breathtaking pieces of art. But that they are more than art is fascinating. The author describes the role of scribes. Amongst manuscripts discussed here are the Cuthbert Gospel which is important in its cultural implications and is the earliest intact book in Europe. One of my favourite stories here is about The Book of Margery Kempe. Another a destructive fire and the rescue mission to save the only surviving Beowulf manuscript. The descriptions of of the gorgeous decorative details are vivid, including the humanist script with a tiny frog in roses, snails, blackberries and a mouse. We learn about the scribes such as Eadfrith as well as scribe relationships with employers. Prior to reading this book I had no idea what anchoresses or anchorite cells were. Folded pages which we take for granted were groundbreaking in medieval times. I enjoyed learning about manuscript terminology, methods and watermarks.

Anyone even remotely interested in manuscripts ought to read this treasure.

My sincere thank you to Perseus Books, Basic Books and NetGalley for the privilege of reading this enticing book. The information is spectacular!

The Gilded Page: The Secret Lives of Medieval Manuscripts
By Mary Wellesley
Basic Books, 12 October 2021

I loved this book by Mary Wellesley! As a lover of books and the history of books, this was a perfect choice for me. It has a beautiful cover that makes you want to open the book right away. Wellesley includes chapters about the history of illuminated manuscripts, how they were made, who made them (it took a lot of different hands and skills), and who they were made for.

Reading about who created these masterpieces felt like traveling through time. Top-notch writing and descriptions of people, places, and books that will make you feel like you were there, watching these masterpieces be created.

I was particularly entranced by the chapter about hidden manuscript authors, such as an anchoress, “a person who permanently enclosed herself into a cell to live a life of prayer and contemplation.” This is something I’d never heard of, but it was apparently somewhat common.

The Gilded Page is well-written, informative, and never boring. This is definitely a five-star book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Basic Books for the free digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

Mary Wellesley loves medieval manuscripts and that love, and her knowledge of these ancient books / art objects, shines through in this fascinating book. Wellesley, a Research Affiliate at the British Library, takes a tour through a number of these books while providing informative background on how manuscripts were produced.

Every medieval manuscript is unique, and manuscript creation is difficult for our modern minds to really understand. From the author (or authors, as many manuscripts are collections of various works), to the scribes, to the artists who illustrated (or "illuminated"), to the craftsmen who made the parchment, to the binders and makers of the covers - an individual manuscript required varied skills, passed through many hands, and could take years of tedious work to produce. When done, each manuscript would be difficult to recreate and was a prized possession above and beyond the knowledge it contained.

I read the ebook so I'm not sure how many illustrations are included in the hard cover edition. But, it doesn't really matter as the footnotes in the book provide links and information that allow a reader to quickly jump to the British Library (where most of the books discussed are catalogued) and view online detailed images of the manuscript pages Wellesley describes. I did this a number of times and it really helps to solidify the information Wellesley is providing.

Understanding these manuscripts means having a basic understanding of the times and society that produced them, and there is quite a bit of history in this book. She takes us from the early days of manuscript creation by monks and nuns to the late medieval / early modern time when creating manuscripts was a commercial activity alongside the production of books via printing press.

Wellesley clearly has an interest in understanding the role women took in producing manuscripts, whether as authors or scribes, and provides a number of examples of both. There is a whole section devoted to anchoresses - women who devoted their lives to solitude and devotion, depriving themselves of earthly pleasures by allowing themselves to be locked away for life - imprisoned really - in tiny rooms often attached to their local churches. One of the few earthly activities they were allowed was to read and write (with the priest's permission of course). Wellesley describes one of the most well known anchoresses, and whether or not we can know how much of her story comes down to us in her own words.

And that is what makes the book so interesting - Wellesley's ability to take us from the manuscripts she lovingly describes back into the world of their creators. I enjoyed the book and learned quite a bit. I give The Gilded Page Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐.

I found this book fascinating! Wellesley obviously loves books so dearly that I felt her to be a kindred spirit. She quotes Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham who said, "In books we climb mountains and scan the deepest gulfs of the abyss." Since I love everything to do with books and reading I was very interested to learn more about manuscripts - how they were made, how they survived, and what we learn from them.
Wellesley says, " Manuscripts hold stories and snapshots of the lives of people we otherwise might not encounter - anonymous scribes, artists, and writers; people of a different social status than ourselves; people of different enthnicities and genders. And through manuscripts we can try to access something of their lives." This appears to be her thesis and she succeeded absolutely in convincing me of this. I admire the people I met here and I admit I also kind of loved the manuscripts themselves.
Just a couple of things I learned: "... a scribe might produce about twenty books in his or her lifetime."(!); and, women called "anchoresses" committed to lives of absolutely solitude and devotion and were enclosed in tiny-rooms-for-one for the remainder of their lives - which was sometimes decades. Many were even buried in the floors there when they died. Fascinating manuscripts were written by and about them.
If you love books you should read this. (Ending with a Reading Rainbow recommendation, if that's ok.)

My godfather was an archivist and worked with ancient manuscripts so I grew up hearing stories about how them
This well researched and compelling book is about manuscripts, how they were written, the authors and their life.
It was a fascinating and informative read, a must read if you love books.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

If I could give this book more than five stars I would without hesitation. Books - the feel, the smell, the artwork, the mystery of their earliest creation - if you love them you need to read The Gilded Page. Even as a child I wondered about the people who copied books, women and men carefully replicating the magic that turned manuscripts into works of art. How did their personal opinions influence their work. What did they edit, either adding or subtracting. As an art history major and avid reader this book spoke to me from the first page. The author introduces us to a sixteenth century girl named Elisabeth Danes who cherished her book so passionately that she wrote a threat in her book to warn would be thieves what would happen to them for their crime. In her words - "Thys ys Elisabeth danes boke he that stelyng shall be hanged by a croke (This is Elisabeth Danes's book, he that steals it shall be hanged by a crook - meaning a hook)
I knew at that moment I was going to love this book. I could give so many examples in my review but I don't want to spoil a new readers pleasure of discovery within these pages.
My thanks to the publisher Basic Books - Hatchette Book Group and to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

5/5 stars! Definitely a fun read, accessible to everyone.

The Gilded Page is a non-fiction work focusing on medieval manuscripts. The author addresses the manuscripts themselves, their author, how they came to be, and much more. She tries to show ‘how manuscripts connect us to lives in the past’.

This book is accessible to the general public. Even though there is Old English used, as well as specific terms to this field, there is a translation added into the book, as well as a glossary. The text is informational, and the author brings up great discussion points. There are many interesting examples of manuscripts, scribes, and places included. All of them fit together and are well explained. It covers a large time period, but it doesn’t feel all over the place: everything comes together.

It’s easy to feel the author’s passion for the subject. She is a scholar, and has seen many of the manuscripts mentioned in person. That passion and first-hand understanding of what she’s talking about makes for an engaging book. Being a woman herself, she made sure to include their presence in this book, and give them back their rightful place in history.

If the topic of this book interests you, I would recommend picking it up. It’s easy to read and understand, and will take you on a fun journey. More than just facts, the author makes the manuscripts come to life.

* This book review will also be shared on Goodreads and Twitter, and will be published on Amazon Canada on its release day.

A fascinating, well-illustrated and (pardon the pun) illuminating history of medieval manuscripts in England, from the St Cuthbert Gospel (discovered in 1104 in the coffin of the selfsame saint) to Henry VIII’s psalter (with the king’s own, revealing marginal notes). “When you hold a medieval manuscript, what lies in front of you is not only a text, but also a collection of human stories,” writes researcher and medievalist Mary Wellesley. Here she tells the tells the stories of those artisans, artists, scribes and collectors who made and preserved these fragile yet stunning artefacts (“some of the richest and strangest objects made by human hands”) which document our history and culture in times past.

An engaging read about the discovery and importance of some of our oldest manuscripts, this is a great book for any literary or history buff.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Perseus Books for an advanced copy of this book on the history of manuscripts.

In the book The Gilded Page: The Secret Lives of Medieval Manuscripts author Mary Wellesley has written a romance that spans the ages. The love that readers have for books, the duress that some people put themselves to create their masterworks, and the people who care and translate them. Ms. Wellesley describes the creation of manuscripts, from the making of ink, to the treating of parchment along with stories of creators and those who try to keep these books alive and available to scholars and laypeople.

The book is wonderfully sourced, with facts and interesting asides on almost every page. To read about these people, what they did, and how they might have been lost to time except for their book is a real treat. As I read I felt for all those stories lost to rats, to rot, to fire and man's inability not to destroy things

A perfect book for historians and bibliophiles. The book is packed with profiles of great and simple people offering a written portrait of their times. Simply a great read from a gifted author.

A bit long-winded at times, but overall a very interesting and informative book. As someone who's fascinated by ancient tomes, it helped to reinforce my love of old books and manuscripts.

I received a review copy of this from the publisher Hatchette Book Group through NetGalley. An uncommon topic treated clearly passionately by Dr. Wellesley ("To sit in the silence of a special collections reading room and turn the pages of a medieval manuscript is to have tangible, smellable, visual encounters with the past. Parchment manuscripts have a particular scent that is hard to describe: acrid with undernotes suggesting an organic origin.") I liked all of the historical background and notes before Dr. Wellesley even gets into the various gilded leaves. One example early in the book: a fifteenth century recipe for ink. Dr. Wellesley conveys some of the difficulties researchers have in their work with manuscripts: "Some questions cannot be answered by copies or surrogates. And when a manuscript is lost completely, many important clues to its provenance are lost with it." She talks about tragic losses and near-losses - fires, deliberate destruction, more. She talks about patronage, some of the artists who illustrated the manuscripts she researched, some of the scribes who copied them, the authors, and some texts whose authorship is unknown.

Dr. Wellesley says "Because I love language and language forms, I have chosen, in almost all cases, to quote from original texts alongside modern translations." Because I love language and language forms...but am hampered by atrophied synapses that are not all that good at learning a new language... I so very much appreciate her quoting the originals and providing the translations. Despite that hampering, by the end of the book I could almost parse a bit of Old English! And understand a wee more of middle/early modern English. The Welsh? Whooee, what a jawcracker! I liked that she even translated early modern English, though those quotes were quite clear enough to me.

A continuing theme throughout this book is the importance, involvement, patronage, roles as scribes women had in ancient manuscripts; and some of the history, and lost history, of female authorship. Dr. Wellesley describes one thirteenth century translation of Aesop's Fables with final lines that "mean that the text is the work of the earliest named female writer of secular literature in the European tradition: Marie de France. And yet we know almost nothing about her." Along with the theme, Dr. Wellesly recounts several instances of male revisions of female writings. Though Marie "raises women from a position of moral inferiority to one of greater equality", some scribes making copies of her Fables added and changed lines that changed the meaning. In one fable of a wolf and a sow, the sow outwits the wolf. Marie closes the fable with [the literal translation]"All women should hear this example and remember it: they should not let their children die for want of a lie." And yet

[Quote] The scribe of a fourteenth-century copy of "The Fables" in Cambridge changed this, however, turning the line "Que pur sulement mentir" (Only for want of a lie ) to "Por soulement lor cors garist" (Only to protect themselves). The change refashions this story of a protective mother into a suggestion that mothers might prioritize their own safety over that of their offspring. This is only one example: we see a pattern of misogynistic alterations in the manuscripts of Marie's "Fables."[end quote]



I found one other example especially interesting to me. It that showed that not "all the literature produced by female writers from medieval Britain was bound by stricture." The

[quote]Welsh poet Gwerful Mechain (c. 1460-1502) wrote in a gloriously unrestricted way. Her surviving work is varied. She wrote the kind of religious verse common to her ere - the late fifteenth century = but she also wrote about topics that few, if any, medieval women writers discussed: unambiguous sexual desire, bodily functions, domestic violence.[end quote]

And

[quote] "Cywydd y gont" is Gwerful Mechain's most famous poem, and the evidence of surviving manuscripts suggest it was also one of her most popular - it survives in thirteen copies. Perhaps part of its shocking, witty, joyous appeal was the way it took a familiar form and refashioned it. The poem is likely a response to Dafydd ap Gwilym's famous "Cywydd y Gal" [...] [end quote]

I'll leave it to the curious to look up what the titles of the two poems translate to.

My one sadness with this book is that in at least the review copy I received, there were no actual illustrations of the works Dr. Wellesley cited. There are cumbersome urls in the notes, but they are largely ... cumbersome. Perhaps the publisher could also provide shortened links? I don't know if the final copy will have any of the gilded pages described.

And also for the publisher/editor:
In my copy, Chapter 6, there is a typo "Early printed editions of Chaucerf's work".

And, in Chapter 7, the text reads "Once he'd had that insight, the code could be cracked as follows, with the words in italics indicating vowels:" The consonants in my copy were also italics, not just the words indicating the vowels. Yes, her text that follows that does have the described vowels italicized, but the repeat of the code was the same, with slight regrouping of the letters.

I was fascinated by Medieval literature once upon a time but left it behind when I realized I'd never have my own personal wizard. The new movie, The Green Knight, got me fascinated all over with stories of saints doing weird things and other oddities of life. The Gilded Page, by Mary Wellesley, came along at the right time. Most Medieval manuscripts have been lost or destroyed through the ages, but the ones that survive have fascinating histories. We picture monks scribing away at illuminated books, but there were nuns, secular people writing commercially, and more women scribes (called a scriptrix) than our modern minds can imagine.

Talk about horror stories! That's what I mainly write about, but there were plenty of horrifying things going on in the Middle Ages. A few hundred men and women (mostly women) had themselves walled up in 12 square foot cells on the north side of churches, where they slept in their own graves and had a window looking out on the graveyard. They spent their lives there and at least one women lived to be seventy-three. They're in this book because they got a lot of writing done...as you can imagine.

I realize that putting color photography in books is expensive, but illustrations of Ms. Wellesley's wonderful descriptions would be nice. This would make a wonderful coffee table book, but would probably cost a fortune. I'm interested enough that I'm going to google-up these manuscripts so I can see the beautiful artwork. Isn't that what a good book does, make you want to learn more?

This is a dandy book for anybody interested in the history of books and/or Medieval history. Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me to read and review The Gilded Page.

Really well researched piece of work. The author's enthusiasm oozes from every page, well worth a read for layman or scholar alike.