The Introduction outlines the subject matter and rationale of the book, as well as its temporal and geographical scope. Divided over three sections – Book Production, Readers and Their Books, and Types of Books – the collection focuses on the production and use of manuscripts in the ‘long’ twelfth century – that is, the period stretching from the late eleventh through the early thirteenth century – taking the cultural changes that occurred during the so-called ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’ as its point of departure. It provides a ‘big-picture’ overview of manuscript culture encompassing the whole of Western Europe and based upon expert analysis of each subject area. While certain elements of book culture already received scholarly attention, the manuscript as a whole and as a developing European book format has not yet received significant attention, nor has the historical backdrop of its creation as a pan-European intellectual movement. Furthermore, the volume also broadly investigates how readers in the twelfth century interacted with books and texts. It aims to show how a changing literary taste, a shift in the use of texts and a new outlook on the world among intellectuals affected the practices of book production and reading in varying degrees.