First published in 1969, English Cursive Book Hands rapidly established itself as a key resource for the study and teaching of palaeography. It covers the changes in handwriting that arose from the mid-12th century, tracking the growth and development of the cursive script that came to dominate book production in medieval England. This reprint is a re-issue of the 1979 2nd edition published by Scolar Press.

M.B. Parkes (1930 - 2103) was Professor Emeritus of Palaeography in the University of Oxford, and Fellow emeritus of Keble College. He was a Senior Fellow of the British Academy, a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, and had been Visiting Professor at the University of Konstanz (1974 and 1980), James T. Hill Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota (1991), and Visiting Professor of Latin at Harvard University (1997). He is the author of Their Hands Before Our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes and his other publications include Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West; both books are also available from Ashgate.

Contents: Introduction; A note on palaeographical terms; Select Bibliography; A note on the Transcriptions; List of plates. Plates, Notes and Transcriptions: Anglicana book hands; Anglicana Formata; Bastard Anglicana; The development of Secretary as determined by hands in documents; Secretary book hands; Bastard Secretary; The handwriting of university scribes; Developments in the hierarchy of scripts; The handwriting of individual scribes; Indexes.