This volume compiles twenty-six studies centred on illuminated manuscripts created in 13th and 14th century England, especially illuminated psalters. The book delves into the marginal illustrations in these psalters and includes iconographic studies. Additionally, it covers illustrated encyclopedias of the era, with a focus on the Omne bonum.

The author is Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of Art History emerita at New York University, Institute of Fine Arts , and a leading authority on English medieval manuscript illumination. This volume brings together twenty-eight of Professor Sandler's studies, focusing on illustrated manuscripts produced in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, particularly on the illuminated psalters. They are arranged under four headings, 'Marginalia and Word Imagery,' 'Devotional, Visionary and Self-Images,' 'Illustrated Encyclopedias and Scholarly Texts,' and 'Studies of Individual Manuscripts, Artists and Themes.' The marginal illustrations in the psalters are a topic of particular interest, and there are a number of iconographic studies derived from this material. A second section features essays that look at the effect of manuscript imagery on its viewing, reading, and meditating audience. The third section deals with the illustrated encyclopedias of the period, particularly the Omne bonum , a fourteenth-century manuscript compiled and written by James le Palmer, a scribe in the London Exchequer. A final section deals with a number of manuscripts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in particular East Anglian works such as the Peterborough and Ramsey Psalters.