The book of hours, a personal prayer book, was the most intimate and widely owned book of the later Middle Ages. Used for private, domestic devotions, books of hours were enhanced with elaborate illumination and illustration, and their pages reveal traces of their owner’s daily lives and reflect their social rank and position. Nigel Morgan discusses the special characteristics of books of hours made in England.
A lecture held on 3 April 2008 at the State Library of Victoria, in association with the exhibition The Medieval Imagination.
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Professor Nigel Morgan is known internationally as a specialist on medieval illuminated manuscripts, and he has written many books in this field, particularly on illustrated English Apocalypses. He has taught at the universities of East Anglia, London and Oslo, and he was Professor of the History of Art at La Trobe University for six years, and Helen Macpherson Smith Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne for three years. He is currently Honorary Professor of the History of Art at the University of Cambridge, UK, and he is one of the academic editors of The Medieval Imagination exhibition catalogue.
Where possible, a transcript or speaker's notes can be provided upon request.
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