| Summary: | This article focuses on medieval improvisation and intervention in the production of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 33, a parchment-wrapped fourteenth-century manuscript containing medieval romances. This book’s limp binding consists of two wrappers, now detached from the book block. Figure 1 shows Stephen H. Shepherd’s speculative reconstruction of these wrappers. The pair of parchment wrappers were made from recycled papal and clerical documents. Remarkably, the wrappers also carry a written draft of Sir Firumbras, a Middle English romance found in full in the main body of the book.
In this unusual and rare survival, both draft and fair copy of the romance coexisted until the former was used as an improvised binding to wrap the latter. In addition, the materials of this manuscript demonstrate multiple interventions by medieval bookbinders: recycled parchment was used for the draft copy, then the fair copy was written, the book block was bound, and the draft copy formed a double wrapper. Figure 2 shows one of those wrappers, the outer layer of limp binding, as it survives now. This extraordinary case study demonstrates the range and ingenuity of medieval improvisation and intervention in bookbinding.
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