Delivered at the Ashmolean Museum, in accordance with the terms of Lyell's will, as the first Lyell lecture by the first James P. R. Lyell Reader in Bibliography at Oxford University.

The lecture is not printed with the following five of Ker's Lyell lectures in English manuscripts in the century after the Norman Conquest (Oxford 1960), but fols. 1r — 10r line 26 were published as pp. xv — xxi line 32 of the Catalogue of the collection of medieval manuscripts bequeathed to the Bodleian Library Oxford by James P. R. Lyell (by Albinia de la Mare), Oxford 1971; fols. 10r line 27 — 12r contain a short account of English book-scripts from the 12th to the 15th cent., with special reference to Lyell manuscripts; fols. 13r-14r contain a partial list of Lyell's dates of acquisition, sources and prices paid, printed in expanded form by de la Mare, pp. xxv-vii.