The Clopton Manuscript and the Beauchamp Affinity: Patronage and Reception Issues in a West Midlands Reading Community

The medieval English West Midlands has long been associated with the production of vernacular texts, in Old and Middle English, and with the making of several famous manuscripts. The aim of this volume is to re-think assumptions about medieval literature and the region in the light of new research in medieval book history. A series of specially commissioned essays in ‘manuscript geography’ examines the making and use of texts and books in relation to cultural networks in the region and beyond. Included are case studies of manuscripts of Worcester and the Worcester diocese from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries; investigations of manuscript production in fourteenth-century Shropshire and its wider regional links; and essays on textual cultures in Warwickshire from the activities of the aristocrats and gentry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the projects of later antiquarians. Essays in the final section of the volume reflect on the possibilities of large-scale, corpus-based research on medieval manuscript books. Collectively the essays identify and explore some of the investments of traditional regionalist accounts of vernacular literary culture and model new theoretical and methodological approaches. Ryan Perry's essay identifies a particular reading network which is mapped onto the social network of the gentry affiliates of the Beauchamp family. He suggests theoretical models for understanding such books in terms of the ways materials were sourced by book patrons, and their social meanings to members of this aspirational class of consumer.