ABSTRACT
Late medieval England was certainly not a bookless society. The ownership of books was not uncommon among the richer classes, both clerical and lay; the evidence for it is abundant in inventories, wills, catalogues and incidental references (Goldberg 1994; Humphreys 1967; Moran 1985: 185-220). By the middle of the fifteenth century, ownership of both religious and secular books was noticeably increasing among the laity (Fischer 2003: 168-70). There were libraries and other collections of books in universities, collegiate foundations and monastic houses, and from the reign of Edward IV (1461-83) there was a formally organised Royal Library based on royal collections that were already at least a century old (Backhouse 1999; Bell 1999; Stratford 1999). Books were undoubtedly expensive (Bell 1936-7), but they were available and in limited circles of society they were familiar.
