Privately-owned English urban manuscripts, 1300-1476: a database

"The project aims to address the following questions:

* who were the private owners of books in late-medieval towns?
* what did their books contain?
* who produced them?
* was there a distinctive urban literate culture?

The answers to these questions will be presented in the form of a database which will provide for the first time a resource for the systematic study of the literate culture of English townspeople, lay and clerical, in the late Middle Ages. The results will be published in the form of a searchable web-based database. Analysis will be possible under a variety of headings, including owners' names, genders and occupations, codicological information and the provenance and contents of the manuscripts" (from project web site; please see for more details).