The oldest college in Oxford, Merton, was founded in the 1270s. Its library contains some 325 medieval manuscripts and 150 fragments, dating from the ninth until the late fifteenth century. Most of them came to the College before the Reformation, and are the remains of its medieval collection, part of which was chained in the library, part in circulation amongst the fellowship. Together with the College's surviving medieval archive, which includes no fewer than twenty-three book-lists, this material provides an important window on intellectual life at the University of Oxford between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, and on the manufacture, acquisition and use of the books that supported it.

The collection was last catalogued, skeletally, in 1852. This new descriptive catalogue will therefore be warmly welcomed as an invaluable guide to this rich resource. It offers full and detailed descriptions of each item, prefaced by an essay tracing the history of the College's medieval library; there are also some 100 plates, appendices and comprehensive indexes.

R. M. THOMSON is Professor Emeritus and Honorary Research Associate in the School of History and Classics, University of Tasmania.