The Luttrell psalter

by Janet Backhouse

Written and illuminated in the early 14th century for Sir Geoffrey Luttrell of Irnham in Lincolnshire, The Luttrell Psalter is celebrated for its long series of attractive marginal illustrations showing scenes of rural life in medieval England. Here Janet Backhouse describes the manuscript's creation and history, illustrated with 40 colour and 20 black-and-white photographs reproduced from the original. This is the second volume in a series of high-quality, colour-illustrated books, each devoted to a single illuminated manuscript in The British Library's collections. Janet Backhouse is the author of many books, including "Books of Hours" (1985), "The Illuminated Manuscript" (1979), "The Lindisfarne Gospels" (1981), and "The Becket Leaves" (1988).

Genres: History

64 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1989

About the author

Janet Backhouse, a respected authority in her field, was a former curator of illuminated manuscripts for The British Library.

Reviews

[Dr G · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very disappointed with this book. Perhaps that was because I wanted something that it never intended to be. However, I only recently found out about the Luttrell Psalter and when I investigated, there were very few books about the work, most of what there were being out of circulation now, and others being prohibitively expensive.
My disappointment results from the text being almost exlusively genealogical about the family(ies) which owned the psalter. For me, that was uninteresting; I wanted much more about the psalter's illuminations and what they showed about contemporary life. The genealogy seems, to me, to be a decidedly niche esoteric interest. Ah well.