The Luttrell Psalter (Folio Society Limited Edition)
LUTTRELL PSALTER (commentary by Michelle P. Brown). London: The Folio Society, 2006. 2 vols.
Folio. Main volume bound in full deep-blue goatskin leather. Cover illustration by David Eccles blocked in three shades of gilt foil. All edges gilt. 688 pp., profusely illustrated throughout in colour. Commentary volume bound in quarter deep-blue buckram and bright blue boards, spine and cloth margins lettered in gilt, cover titling on white panel. [Pagination to be confirmed.] Both volumes housed in blue buckram solander case. Original protective board separating volumes present. Facsimile limited edition. Numbered on colophon, 1067 of 1,480.
The Luttrell Psalter — British Library Additional MS 42130 — was produced in Lincolnshire between approximately 1325 and 1340 for Sir Geoffrey Luttrell of Irnham, and it is among the most remarkable objects to have survived from medieval England. It is a psalter: its primary purpose was liturgical, and it contains the text of the psalms in Latin with accompanying prayers and canticles. But the psalms are almost incidental to what the manuscript has become famous for. Its margins and borders are filled with an extraordinary proliferation of images — some pious, many strange, and a significant number of unambiguous and sometimes startling bawdiness — that together constitute an incomparable documentary record of fourteenth-century English life.
Alongside the grotesques, hybrids, and monsters that populate every medieval marginal programme, the Luttrell Psalter contains images of unusual directness and specificity: men ploughing behind teams of oxen, women spinning and weeding, servants laying a table, a cook turning a spit, a musician playing a bagpipe, and an extraordinary full-page image of Sir Geoffrey himself on horseback, receiving lance and shield from his wife and daughter-in-law, figures who appear to have sat for their portraits. The agricultural cycle of the English calendar year is depicted in its full and laborious detail. These are not symbolic or allegorical images; they are observations, and they preserve details of costume, equipment, posture, and social ritual that are available nowhere else. No other English medieval manuscript offers a comparable window into the texture of daily life in the period.
The manuscript is also significant as a document of its owner's anxieties. The Luttrell family commissions reflect a gentry family at a moment of social uncertainty, asserting its status, its piety, and its local roots at a time when the established order was under pressure from plague, labour shortage, and political instability. The psalter was produced for private devotional use, but it functions as an act of self-presentation as much as a work of faith.
The Folio Society edition of 2006, limited to 1,480 copies and produced at folio scale to reproduce the manuscript pages at something close to their original dimensions, was accompanied by a substantial commentary volume by Michelle P. Brown, then Head of Manuscripts at the British Library and one of the leading scholars of medieval English manuscripts, who has written extensively on insular illumination and Anglo-Saxon art.
Fine throughout. All volumes and solander case impeccably preserved.
This book is currently on display in the rare book section of our Paddington store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000304
Please note: This item is large and heavy. Within Australia it may require additional postage costs. For international shipping please contact us for a quote.
Description
LUTTRELL PSALTER (commentary by Michelle P. Brown). London: The Folio Society, 2006. 2 vols.
Folio. Main volume bound in full deep-blue goatskin leather. Cover illustration by David Eccles blocked in three shades of gilt foil. All edges gilt. 688 pp., profusely illustrated throughout in colour. Commentary volume bound in quarter deep-blue buckram and bright blue boards, spine and cloth margins lettered in gilt, cover titling on white panel. [Pagination to be confirmed.] Both volumes housed in blue buckram solander case. Original protective board separating volumes present. Facsimile limited edition. Numbered on colophon, 1067 of 1,480.
The Luttrell Psalter — British Library Additional MS 42130 — was produced in Lincolnshire between approximately 1325 and 1340 for Sir Geoffrey Luttrell of Irnham, and it is among the most remarkable objects to have survived from medieval England. It is a psalter: its primary purpose was liturgical, and it contains the text of the psalms in Latin with accompanying prayers and canticles. But the psalms are almost incidental to what the manuscript has become famous for. Its margins and borders are filled with an extraordinary proliferation of images — some pious, many strange, and a significant number of unambiguous and sometimes startling bawdiness — that together constitute an incomparable documentary record of fourteenth-century English life.
Alongside the grotesques, hybrids, and monsters that populate every medieval marginal programme, the Luttrell Psalter contains images of unusual directness and specificity: men ploughing behind teams of oxen, women spinning and weeding, servants laying a table, a cook turning a spit, a musician playing a bagpipe, and an extraordinary full-page image of Sir Geoffrey himself on horseback, receiving lance and shield from his wife and daughter-in-law, figures who appear to have sat for their portraits. The agricultural cycle of the English calendar year is depicted in its full and laborious detail. These are not symbolic or allegorical images; they are observations, and they preserve details of costume, equipment, posture, and social ritual that are available nowhere else. No other English medieval manuscript offers a comparable window into the texture of daily life in the period.
The manuscript is also significant as a document of its owner's anxieties. The Luttrell family commissions reflect a gentry family at a moment of social uncertainty, asserting its status, its piety, and its local roots at a time when the established order was under pressure from plague, labour shortage, and political instability. The psalter was produced for private devotional use, but it functions as an act of self-presentation as much as a work of faith.
The Folio Society edition of 2006, limited to 1,480 copies and produced at folio scale to reproduce the manuscript pages at something close to their original dimensions, was accompanied by a substantial commentary volume by Michelle P. Brown, then Head of Manuscripts at the British Library and one of the leading scholars of medieval English manuscripts, who has written extensively on insular illumination and Anglo-Saxon art.
Fine throughout. All volumes and solander case impeccably preserved.
This book is currently on display in the rare book section of our Paddington store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000304
Please note: This item is large and heavy. Within Australia it may require additional postage costs. For international shipping please contact us for a quote.
