Description: Early manuscripts in the English language include religious works, plays, romances, poetry, and songs, as well as charms, notebooks, science, and medieval medicine. How did scribes choose to arrange the words and images on the page in each manuscript? How did they preserve, clarify, and illustrate writing in English? What visual guides were given to early readers of English in how to understand or use their books? [This book] is an overview of eight centuries of graphic design in manuscripts and inscriptions from the Anglo-Saxon to the early Tudor periods. Working beyond the traditions established for Latin, scribes of English needed to be more inventive, so that each book was an opportunity for redesigning --
Brief description:
Daniel Wakelin is Jeremy Griffiths Professor of Medieval English Palaeography in the Faculty of English, University of Oxford.
Review Quotes: "Covering a wide range of genres, including religious texts, poetry, songs, plays, and medieval medicine manuscripts, Designing English: Early Literature on the Page aspires to map out the evolution of the burgeoning English lexicon and the connection of words to images. How these elements evolved became templates for the protocols defining print and other material texts during the Middle Ages and into the modern age, according to this book."-- "Communication Booknotes Quarterly"