A significant step in the recataloguing of imperfectly catalogued collections of manuscripts in the United Kingdom is marked by the publication of Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Hereford Cathedral Library, ed. R. A. B. Mynors and R. M. Thomson, with a contribution on the bindings by Michael Gullick (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993; pp. xxxiv + 158. £120). Hereford's collection is hardly unknown, the last published catalogue, by Canon A. T. Bannister (1927) being good enough to alert scholars to its riches. Today, however, much more is expected from, and in general achieved by, compilers (an inadequate word) of descriptive catalogues, and it is fortunate that Hereford's new catalogue is the joint work of two such mature scholars as Sir Roger Mynors, who began work in 1954, and Professor Rodney Thomson, who carried on from the point reached by Mynors when he died in 1989. The Hereford collection (i.e. the famous chained library) contains 229 western manuscripts (according to Thomson) with 230 bindings (according to Gullick) of the eighth to the early sixteenth century, of which 112 were there before the Reformation, 89 were not, and 26 are unassignable to either group. These figures seem not to add up to the required totals, but that does not invalidate the many interesting facts in the Introduction; e.g. that about half of the manuscripts date from the twelfth century; that many were made by the religious communities that owned them; that most of the books that came in after the Reformation were from religious houses in the locality; and that the collection provides much evidence about the use and dissemination of particular texts. Professor Thomson has managed to establish provenances for books whose origins have hitherto been obscure and has identified an active scriptorium at St Peter's Abbey, Gloucester (about which more can be expected from him). Thomson's Introduction is, in fact, required reading for anyone interested in medieval books and libraries. The same can be said about Gullick's account of the bindings, which breaks new ground and is both historical and, with a number of excellent drawings, highly practical. Professor Thomson makes no special claims for the standard of decoration in these manuscripts, but his magnificent colour plates almost belie his words, the quite glorious twelfth-century books and some of the glossed canon law volumes being particularly striking. As for the catalogue itself, its scope and arrangement are similar to but not identical with those in Professor Thomson's catalogue of the Lincoln Cathedral manuscripts published in 1989, and it is supplemented by good indexes, including an index of such incipits as are not included in standard incipitaria. Only time, and use alongside the manuscripts it describes, can reveal a catalogue's strengths and weaknesses, but my guess is that this one will survive very well.

ANDREW G. WATSON Oxford