Recent analysis of later medieval textual culture has focused largely on its local character by examining regional centres of literary production which catered for an 'indigenous' clientele. But, by looking anew at books which might initially be understood as provincial (the Vernon and Simeon manuscripts, for example), the present author instead maps the ways in which texts transcend regional boundaries, arguing instead for the importance of inter-regional conduits of textual dissemination. Perry's research demonstrates how ideas of regional, socio-literary milieux in this period are rendered problematic by mapping some of the innumerable cultural networks which straddled late-medieval England, and which thus provided channels facilitating the movement of texts. London is discussed as a space which collapsed regional disconnection, allowing textual dissemination to diffuse geographic locations, whilst simultaneously becoming a literary centre for 'clannish', non-metropolitan reading networks, who imported their provincial exemplars into the City. Tracing the multiple ways in which a single text could be articulated in material form, Perry argues for the significance of the patron as a nexus for codicological enquiry. Combining anthropological and economic theory with the conventional methodologies of manuscript studies this book provides new insights into the symbolic functions of books in addition to analysing pragmatic uses, as imagined by their earliest owners.